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offices in the state to be open to all perfons of merit indiffer ently, but will confine your choice of magiftrates to the fenate alone; talk of wars as much as ever you pleafe; paint, in your ordinary difcourfes, the league and power of our enemies, ten times more dreadful than you do now, I declare, that this people whom you fo much defpife, and to whom you are nev ertheless indebted for all your victories, shall never more inlist themselves; not a man of them shall take arms! not a man of them fhall expofe his life for imperious lords, with whom he can neither fhare the dignities of the state, nor in private life have any alliance by marriage,

SPEECH of PUBLIUS SCIPIO to the ROMAN ARMY, before the battle of the Ticin.

1.

WERE you, foldiers, the fame army which I had with

me in Gaul, I might well forbear faying any thing to you at this time; for what occasion could there be to use exhortation to cavalry that had fo fignally vanquished the squadrons of the enemy upon the Rhone; or to legions, by whom that fame enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did in effect canfefs themselves conquered?

2. But, as these troops having been enrolled for Spain are there with my brother Caeus, making war under my aufpices (as was the will of the fenate and people of Rome) I, that you might have a conful for your captain against Hanaibal and the Carthagenians, have freely offered myself for this war. You then have a new general; and I a new army. On this account, a few words from me to you will be neither improper nor unfeasonable.

3. That you may not be unapprised of what fort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them; they are the very fame, whom in a former war you vanquished both by land and fea; the fame from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been these twenty years your tributaries.

4. You will not I prefume march against these men with only that courage with which you are wont to face other enemies; but with a certain anger and indignation, such as you would feel if you faw your flaves on a fudden rife up against you.

5. Conquered and enflaved, it is not boldness, but neceffity

that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that thofe, who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the lofs of two thirds of their horfe and foot in paffing the Alps.

6. But you have heard perhaps, that though they are few in number they are men of ftout hearts, and robuft bodies; heroes of fuch ftrength and vigor as nothing is able to refift. Mere effigies! nay, fhadows of men! wretches, emaciated with hunger and benumbed with cold! bruifed and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons broken and their horfes weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry and fuch the infantry, with which you are going to contend; not enemies but the fragments of enemies.

7. There is nothing which I more apprehend, than that it will be thought Hannibal was vanquished by the Alps before we had any conflict with him.

But, perhaps, it was fitting it fhould be fo; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the Gods themselves, without man's help, fhould begin the war, and bring it to a near conclufion; and that we, who next to the gods, have been injured and offended, fhould happily finish what they have begun.

8. I need not be in any fear that you fhould fufpect me of faying these things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different fentiment. What hindered me from going to Spain? That was my province, where I fhould have had the lefs dreadful Afdrubal, not Hannibal to deal with.

9. But, hearing, as I paffed along the coaft of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, fent the horfe forward, and pitched my camp upon the Rhone. A part of my cavalry encountered and defeated that of the enemy. My infantry not being able to overtake theirs, which fled before us, I returned to my fleet; and, with all the expedition I could ufe in fo long a voyage by sea and land, am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps.

10. Was it, then, my inclination to avoid a conteft with. this tremendous Hannibal ? And have I met with him only by accident and unawares? Or am I come on purpose to challenge him to the combat?

11. I would gladly try whether the earth, within these twenty years has brought forth a new kind of Carthagenians;

or whether they be the fame fort of men who fought at the Agates, and whom at Eryx, you fuffered to redeem themfelves at eighteen denarii a head; whether this Hannibal, for labors and journeys is, as he would be thought, the rival of Hercules; or whether he is what his father left him, a tribu tary, a vaffal, a flave of the Roman people.

12. Did not the confcioufnefs of his wicked deed at Sa. guntum torment him and make him defperate, he would have fome regard, if not to his conquered country, yet furely to his own family, to his father's memory, to the treaty written with Amilcar's own hand. We might have ftarved him in Eryx? we might have paffed into Africa with our victorious fleet; and in a few days have destroyed Carthage. At their humble fupplication we pardoned them, we releafed them, when they were closely fhut up without a poffibility of escaping; we made peace with them when they were conquered.

13. When they were diftreffed by the African war, we confidered them, we treated them as a people under our pro tection: And what is the return they make us for all these favors? Under the conduct of a hair-brained young man, they come hither to overturn our state, and lay waite our country.

14. I could wish indeed, that it were not fo; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our own glory a nd not cur prefervation. But the conteft at prefent is not for the poffeffion of Sicily and Sardinia, but of Italy itfelf; nor is there behind us another army, which if we fhould not prove conquerors, may make head against our victorious enemies.

15. There are no more Alps for them to pass which might give us leifure to raise new forces: No, foldiers; here you muft take your fland, as if yoù were just now before the walls of Rome. Let every one reflect, that he is now to defend not his own perfon only, but his wife, his children, his helpJefs infants.

16. Yet let not private confiderations alone poffels our minds; let us remember that the eyes of the fenate and people of Rome are upon us; and that as our force and courage shall now prove, fuch will be the fortune of that city and of the Roman empire.

CAIUS MARIUS to the Romans; fhewing the abfurdity of their belitating to confer on him the rank of general, merely on as count of his extraction.

1.

IT is but too common, my countrymen, to obferve a ma

terial difference between the behavior of thofe who ftand candidates for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them.

2. They folicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They fet out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into floth, pride, and avarice.

3. It is, undoubtedly, no eafy matter to difcharge, to the general fatisfaction, the duty of a fupreme commander in troublefome times.

may

4. To carry on, with effect, an expenfive war, and yet be frugal of the public money; to oblige thofe to ferve, whom it be delicate to offend; to conduct, at the fame time a complicated variety of operations; to concert measures at home, anfwerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end, in fpite of oppofition from the envious, the factious, and the difaffected-to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought.

5. But, befides the disadvantages which are common to me with all others in eminent ftations, my cafe is, in this respect, peculiarly hard; that, whereas a commander of patritian rank, if he is guilty of a neglect or breach of duty, has his great connections, the antiquity of his family, the important fervices of his ancestors, and the multitudes he has, by power, engaged in his intereft, to screen him from condign punishmentmy whole fafety depends upon myself, which renders it the more indifpenfibly neceffary for me to take care that my conduct be clear and unexceptionable.

6. Befides I am well aware, my countrymen, that the eye of the public is upon me; and that, tho the impartial, who prefer the real advantage of the commonwealth to all other confiderations, favor my pretentions, the patricians want nothing fo much as an occafion against me.

7. It is therefore my fixed refolution to use my best endeavors, that you be not difappointed in me, and that their indirect defigns against me may be defeated.

8. I have from my youth, been familiar with toils and with dangers. I was faithful to your intereft, my countrymen, when I ferved you for no reward but that of honor. It is not

my defign to betray you, now that you have conferred a place of profit.

upon me 9. You have committed to my conduct the war against Jogurtha. The patricians are offended at this. But where would be the wifdem of giving fuch a command to one of their honorable 'body? A perfon of illuftrious birth, of ancient family, of innumerable ftatues, but-of no experience.

10. What service would his long line of dead ancestors or his multitude of motionlefs ftatues do his country in the day of battle? What could fuch a general do, but in his trepidation and inexperience, have recourse to fome inferior commander for direction in difficulties to which he was not himfelf equal? Thus your patrician general would in fact have a general over him ; fo that the acting commander would still be a plebian.

11. So true is this, my countrymen, that I have myself known those who have been chofen confuls, begin then to read the hiftory of their own country, of which, till that time, they were totally ignorant; that is, they firft obtained the employment, and then bethought themselves of the qualifications neceffary for the proper discharge of it.

12. I-fubmit to your judgment, Romans, on which fide the advantage lies when a comparifon is made between patrician haughtiness and plebian experience. The very actions which they have only read, I have partly feen and partly myself achieved. What they know by reading, I know by action. They are pleased to flight my mean birth; I defpife their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me; want of perfonal worth against them.

13. But are not all men of the fame fpecies? What can make a difference between one man and another, but the endowments of the mind? For my part I fhail always look upon the braveft man as the noblest man. Suppose it were inquired of the fathers of fuch patricians as Albinus and Beftia, whether if they had their choice, they would defire fons of their character or of mine? What would they answer, but that they should wish the worthieft to be their fons ?. If the patri cians have reason to defpife me, let them likewife defpife their ancestors, whofe nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honors bestowed upon me, let them envy like. wife my labors, my abftinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them.

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