Polybius was born and educated in Greece and was sent as a war hostage to Rome, where he became a tutor and friend to Scipio Aemilianus. His Histories describe the rise of Rome from 264 to 146 B.C.E., focusing especially on the conflict with Carthage. He bases these in part on eyewitness reporting, and on interviews and written documents. In this section he describes the way the troops collect and distribute war booty after the capture of a town.

Such was the manner in which the Romans gained possession of Spanish Carthage [the city of Cartagena, in today’s Spain]. Next day the booty, both the baggage of the troops in the Carthaginian service and the household stuff of the townsmen and the working classes, having been collected in the market, was divided by the tribunes among their own legions on the usual system. The Romans after the capture of the city manage matters more or less as follows: according to the size of the town sometimes a certain number of men from each maniple [a unit of a Roman legion], at other times certain whole maniples, are told off to collect booty, but they never thus employ more than half their total force, the rest remaining in their ranks at times outside and at times inside the city, ready for any emergency. As their armies are usually composed of two Roman legions and two legions of allies, the whole four legions being rarely massed, all those who are told off to spoil bring the booty back, each man to his own legion, and after it has been sold the tribunes distribute the profits equally among all, including not only those who were left behind in the protecting force, but also the men who are guarding the tents, the sick, and those absent on any special service. I have already stated at some length in my chapters on the Roman state how it is that no one appropriates any part of the loot, but that all keep the oath they make when first assembled in camp on setting out for a campaign. So that when half the army disperse to pillage and the other half keep their ranks and afford them protection, there is never any chance of the Romans suffering disaster owing to individual covetousness. For as all, both the spoilers and those who remain to safeguard them, have equal confidence that they will get their share of the booty, no one leaves the ranks, a thing which usually does injury to other armies.

Source: Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, eds., Roman Civilization: Sourcebook I: The Republic (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1951), pp. 215–216. Copyright © 1990 Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press.

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