STRATAGEMS, IV i 31 37
Messana to take the auspices afresh, placed in charge of the blockade of the Liparian Islands a certain Piiblius Aurelius, who was connected with him by ties of blood. But when Aurelius's line ot works was burned and his camp captured, Cotta had him scourged with rods and ordered him to be reduced to the ranks and to perform the tasks of a common soldier.^
The censor Fulvius Flaccus removed from the Senate his own brother Fulvius, because the latter without the command of the consul had disbanded the legion in which he was tribune of the soldiers.-
On one occasion when Marcus Cato, who had lingered for several days on a hostile shore, had at length set sail, after three times giving the signal for departure, and a certain soldier, who had been left behind, with cries and gestures from the land, begged to be picked up, Cato turned his whole fleet back to the sliore, arrested the man, and commanded him to be put to death, thus preferring to make an example of the fellow than to have him ignominiously put to death by the enemy.^
In the case of those who quitted their places in the line, Appius Claudius picked out every tenth man by lot and had him clubbed to death.
In the case of two legions which had given way before the foe, the consul Fabius Rullus chose men by lot and beheaded them in sight of their comrades.
Aquilius beheaded three men from each of the centuries whose position had been broken through by the enemy.
Marcus Antonius, when fire had been set to his line of works by the enemy, decimated the soldiers of two cohorts of those who were on the works, and
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