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Some Roman soldiers were stationed in Rhegium for the safety and protection of the city against enemies. They, and their leader Decius, envying the good fortune of the inhabitants and seizing an opportunity when they were observing a public festival, slew them and violated their wives. They offered an excuse for this crime, that the citizens of Rhegium were about to betray the garrison to Pyrrhus. So Decius became supreme ruler instead of a prefect of the guard, and he contracted an alliance with the Mamertines, who dwelt on the other side of the strait of Sicily, and who had perpetrated the same kind of an outrage on their hosts not long before.

Suffering from an affection of the eyes and distrusting the physicians of Rhegium, Decius sent for a medical man who had migrated from Rhegium to Messana so long before that it was forgotten that he was a Rhegian. The latter persuaded him that, if he wished speedy relief, he should use certain hot drugs. Having applied a burning and corrosive ointment to his eyes, he told him to bear the pain till he should come again. Then he secretly returned to Messana. Decius, after enduring the pain a long time, washed off the ointment and found that he had lost his eyesight.

Fabricius was sent by the Romans to restore the city to those Rhegians who still remained. He sent the guards who had been guilty of this revolt back to Rome. They were beaten with rods in the forum, then beheaded, and their bodies cast away unburied. Decius, being placed under strict guard, in the discouragement of a blind man, committed suicide.