Hasdrubal, carried with them a golden crown of two hundred pounds'
weight, and representations of the spoils made out of a thousand
pounds' weight of silver. Scipio, though he could not obtain leave
to levy troops, a point which he did not urge with great eagerness,
obtained leave to take with him such as volunteered their services;
and also, as he declared that the fleet would not be the occasion of
expense to the state, to receive what was furnished by the allies for
building fresh ships. First, the states of Etruria engaged to assist
the consuls to the utmost of their respective abilities. The people
of Caere furnished corn, and provisions of every description, for the
crews; the people of Populoni furnished iron; of Tarquinii, cloth
for sails; those of Volaterrae, planks for ships, and corn; those of
Arretium, thirty thousand shields, as many helmets; and of javelins,
Gallic darts, and long spears, they undertook to make up to the amount
of fifty thousand, an equal number of each description, together
with as many axes, mattocks, bills, buckets, and mills, as should be
sufficient for fifty men of war, with a hundred and twenty thousand
pecks of wheat; and to contribute to the support of the decurios and
rowers on the voyage. The people of Perusia, Clusium, and Rusella
furnished firs for building ships, and a great quantity of corn.
Scipio had firs out of the public woods. The states of Umbria, and,
besides them, the people of Nursia, Reate, and Amiternum, and
all those of the Sabine territory, promised soldiers. Many of the
Marsians, Pelignians, and Marrucinians volunteered to serve in the
fleet. The Cameritans, as they were joined with the Romans in league
on equal terms, sent an armed cohort of six hundred men. Having laid
the keels of thirty ships, twenty of which were quinqueremes, and ten
quadriremes, he prosecuted the work with such diligence, that, on the
forty-fifth day after the materials were taken from the woods, the
ships, being fully equipped and armed, were launched.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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