another
country, he was still able to propagate designs for changing
the administration, and disturbing the quiet of the state by his
intrigues. That a Tyrian stranger, named Aristo, had come with a
commission from Hannibal and king Antiochus; that certain men daily
held secret conferences with him, and were concocting that in private,
the consequences of which would soon break out, to the ruin of the
public." This produced a general outcry, that "Aristo ought to be
summoned, and examined respecting the reason of his coming; and if he
did not disclose it, to be sent to Rome, with ambassadors accompanying
him: that they had already suffered enough of punishment in atonement
of the headstrong rashness of one individual; that the faults of
private citizens should be at their own risk, and the state should be
preserved free, not only from guilt, but even from the suspicion of
it." Aristo, being summoned, contended for his innocence; and urged,
as his strongest defence, that he had brought no letter to any person
whatever: but he gave no satisfactory reason for his coming, and
was chiefly embarrassed by the fact which they urged, that he had
conversed solely with men of the Barcine faction. A warm debate
ensued; some earnestly pressing, that he should be immediately seized
as a spy, and kept in custody; while others insisted, that there
were not sufficient grounds for such violent measures; that "putting
strangers into confinement, without reason, was a step that afforded a
bad precedent; for that the same would happen to the Carthaginians at
Tyre, and other marts, where they frequently traded." The question
was adjourned on that day. Aristo practised on the Carthaginians
a Carthaginian artifice; for having early in the evening hung up a
written tablet, in the most frequented place of the city, over the
tribunal where the magistrates daily sat, he went on board his ship at
the third watch, and fled. Next day, when the suffetes had taken their
seats to administer justice, the tablet was observed, taken down,
and read. Its contents were, that "Aristo came not with a private
commission to any person, but with a public one to the elders;" by
this name they called the senate. The imputation being thus thrown
on the state, less pains were taken in searching into the suspicions
harboured of a few individuals: however, it was determined, that
ambassadors should be sent to Rome, to represent the affair to the
consuls and the senate,