Quintus Pleminius Quintus Pleminius was a propraetor ( " legatus pro praetore " ) in 205 BC . He was given command over Locri in Bruttium by Scipio Africanus after its recapture , considered the " outstanding event " in Sicilian operations that year . His governorship , if it should be called that , ended in sacrilege and murder . Military command . Pleminius had been in charge of the garrison at Rhegium , the geographical location of which on the " toe " of the Italian peninsula had made it a " de facto " part of the province of Sicily . From Rhegium he brought a force of 3 , 000 to take possession of Locri , and succeeded in storming one of the citadel s by the aid of exceptionally tall ladders . This action led to a skirmish with Carthaginian troops , who occupied the other . Hostilities escalated when Hannibal arrived on the scene , but Locrian insiders enabled Rome to hold out until Scipio could bring troops from Messana , at which time the Carthaginians withdrew . Scipio ' s intervention technically exceeded the mandate of his command and crossed into the " provincia " of his consular colleague Crassus . Scipio immediately rounded up the Locrians who had attempted to secede and executed them . Those who had remained loyal and aided Rome received their reward in the form of their fellow citizens ' property . Scipio then sent a delegation to Rome placing the matter of Locri ' s political status in the hands of the Roman senate , and returned with his troops to Messana . Bruttium had been Hannibal ' s last stronghold in Italy , and Rome ' s position there was still tentative ; from a diplomatic perspective , it was important to show that Rome was the preferable overlord . Violence and disorder . In Scipio ' s absence , the soldiers under Pleminius lapsed into looting , which the military tribune s attempted to restrain . Discipline dissolved utterly , and the Roman forces divided into warring troops . The men attached to Pleminius got the worst of it , and reported to him with a display of wounds and complaints of ill treatment . Pleminius ' s reaction to this breakdown of discipline was to have the tribunes arrested , stripped , and flogged . Their men then attacked Pleminius , mutilating his ears and nose . Learning of these disturbances , Scipio returned — and reinstated Pleminius . He ordered the offending tribunes sent to Rome to stand trial . " This judgment , " notes H . H . Scullard , " is unexpected , " and various explanations have been proffered . Scullard concludes that Scipio was " guilty of folly and of lack of humanity . " As soon as Scipio left for Sicily , Pleminius had the tribunes seized and tortured them to death , offering a " novel " justification : " No one knew how to name the penalty for a crime except someone who had learnt its savagery by suffering . " They were left unburied . With a rage that seemed unquenchable , Pleminius turned his violence toward Locrians he suspected of informing Scipio . Meanwhile , the Locrian envoys who had traveled to Rome for the senate hearing related in detail how the excesses of the Roman soldiers surpassed those of the Carthaginians . They complained of widespread rapes committed against women and boys dragged from their homes , and the sacrilegious looting of the Temple of Proserpina , the chief deity of Locri . These reports provided fodder for Fabius Maximus , nearing the end of his life , in his opposition to Scipio and his " Greek " way of life in Sicily and his plans to invade Africa . The Locrians , however , diverted any blame to Pleminius . The legal case . The senate sent a ten - man commission headed by Marcus Pomponius Matho to investigate , along with two tribunes of the " plebs " and an aedile . Matho was the praetor and propraetor assigned to Sicily from 204 to 202 BC , and had been authorized to recall Scipio if necessary , but the commission had no judicial powers . Its size was virtually unprecedented , and reflects both the importance of the case and its ultimate target : Scipio , not merely Pleminius . The difficulty and delicacy of Matho ' s position should not be underestimated ; the legal question was whether a high - level magistrate should be held responsible for actions committed by an officer to whom he had delegated " imperium " on his own authority . Since Matho ' s own " imperium " was inferior to that of Scipio , there was a risk that if charged and found guilty , the proconsul would ignore the praetor and simply exit the province to pursue his African venture . Scipio , however , dazzled the commission , while Pleminius was left to take the fall for plundering the Temple of Proserpina and murdering the tribunes Publius Matienus and Marcus Sergius . The legates were able to report that Pleminius had acted neither on Scipio ' s orders nor according to his wishes ( " neque iussu neque voluntate " ) . Questions of arrest and exile . Versions of Pleminius ' s arrest vary . Livy reports two . In one , Pleminius fled when he heard about the investigation , and attempted to go into exile at Naples . He was captured en route by the legate Quintus Caecilius Metellus , the consul of 206 BC . Alternatively , Livy says , Scipio himself sent his own legate and an elite squadron of cavalry to arrest Pleminius and turned him over to the commission . Diodorus reports only the second version that ameliorates Scipio ' s conduct , but has Scipio summoning Pleminius to Sicily , throwing him in chains , then handing him over to the two plebeian tribunes sent with the commission , who were duly impressed by this firm response . Pleminius was later shipped off to Rome and imprisoned , but died before his trial concluded . The charge would have been " perduellio " , a capital crime , most likely to be brought before the centuriate assembly . What was unusual , and perhaps unprecedented at the time , was the arrest of a man who held delegated " imperium " . If it ' s correct that Pleminius chose to become a fugitive , by Roman law he had deserted his post and would be considered an exile . The choice of exile to escape sentencing in a capital crime brought with it a loss of citizenship . The complexities of the case may account for the proliferating versions , and the potential legal status of Pleminius is of interest in documenting the use of exile in ancient Rome . The case of sacrilege at Locri was a precedent in the investigation of an incident involving the same temple only a short time later , conducted by the praetor Quintus Minucius Rufus in 200 BC : see Minucius Rufus : Praetorship in Locri .