Historiae

Lep. The Speech of the Consul Lepidus to the Roman People

'Your clemency and uprightness, citizens of Rome — the qualities by which you are greatest and most renowned among all other nations — cause me the most fear in the face of the tyranny of Lucius Sulla: lest, by giving too little credit to others for the very crimes you yourselves judge unspeakable, you be taken off your guard — above all since for him every hope lies in crime and treachery, and he thinks himself safe in no other way than by being worse and more accursed than your fear of him, so that, once you are taken, your wretchedness may rob you of any care for liberty — or lest, if you do take precautions, you be more occupied in guarding against dangers than in avenging them.

As for his henchmen — men of the greatest names, sprung from the finest examples of their ancestors — I cannot wonder enough that they pay their own servitude as the price of his mastery over you, and prefer to have both through wrongdoing rather than to live as free men under the best of laws: a fine offspring of the Bruti and the Aemilii and the Lutatii, born to overthrow the very things their forefathers won by their valour! For against Pyrrhus, against Hannibal and Philip and Antiochus, what was defended but liberty, and each man's own home, and that we should obey nothing except the laws? All of these things that crooked Romulus holds as if seized from foreigners, and he is not sated by the destruction of so many armies, nor of the consuls and other leading men whom the fortune of war had consumed, but is then the more cruel, when prosperity turns most men from anger to compassion. Nay, he alone of all men within the memory of the human race has devised punishments for those yet to be born, for whom the wrong was made certain before their lives were; and most depravedly, through the monstrousness of his crime, he has so far been safe, while you are frightened away from reclaiming your liberty by the dread of a heavier servitude.

We must act, and go to meet him, citizens, lest your spoils remain in their hands; there must be no putting off, nor are aids to be obtained by prayers — unless perhaps you hope that Sulla is now weary or ashamed of his tyranny, and that he will give up more dangerously what he has seized by crime. But he has gone so far that he reckons nothing glorious except what is safe, and everything that serves to retain his mastery as honourable. And so that peace and leisure with liberty, which many good men used to choose rather than toil with honours, no longer exist; in this storm one must serve or rule, citizens; fear must be felt, or instilled. For what is left beyond this? What human thing survives, or what divine thing is unprofaned? The Roman people, a little while ago the governor of nations, stripped of empire, of glory, of right, without the means to keep itself in motion, despised, has not even the food of slaves left to it. A great part of the allies and of the Latins, granted citizenship by you in return for their many distinguished deeds, are now forbidden it by one man; and a few of his henchmen, as the reward of their crimes, have seized the ancestral homes of the innocent commons. The laws, the courts, the treasury, the provinces, the kings are in the hands of one man — in short, the power of life and death over the citizens. At the same time you have seen human sacrifices, and tombs stained with the blood of citizens. Is anything left to men but to undo the wrong, or to die through valour — since indeed Nature has appointed one and the same end for all, even for those fenced about with steel, and no one awaits the last necessity, having dared nothing, unless he be of a woman's spirit?

But I am seditious, as Sulla says, because I complain of the rewards of disorder; and a lover of war, because I demand the rights of peace — no doubt because you will be safe and sufficiently secure under his rule in no other way than if Vettius the Picentine and the clerk Cornelius squander what others have honestly won, unless you all approve the proscription of the innocent for their riches, the torture of illustrious men, a city laid waste by flight and slaughter, the goods of wretched citizens sold or given away as if they were Cimbric plunder. But he casts in my teeth the estates I hold from the goods of the proscribed. Yet this indeed is the very greatest of his crimes — that neither I nor any man at all was safe enough if we acted rightly. And those properties, which I then bought out of dread, with the price paid in due form, I nonetheless restore to their owners; and it is not my intention to allow any plunder to be made out of the citizens. Enough be those things which, contracted in madness, we have endured: Roman armies joining battle among themselves, and arms turned by foreigners against ourselves. Let there be an end of all crimes and outrages — of which Sulla so far repents not at all, that he both reckons what he has done among his glories and, if he were allowed, would do them more greedily.

And now I fear not so much what you think of him as how much you dare; lest, while each of you waits for another to lead, you be caught beforehand — not by his resources, which are flimsy and rotten, but by your own apathy, by which one is free to go a-plundering, and to seem fortunate just so far as one dares. For apart from his polluted henchmen, who wants the same things, or who does not want everything changed except the victory? The soldiers, no doubt, by whose blood riches have been won for Tarula and Scirtus, the basest of slaves! Or those over whom Fufidius was preferred in the seeking of magistracies — that vile serving-girl, the dishonour of all honours? And so the victorious army gives me the greatest confidence, since by all its wounds and toils it has sought nothing but a tyrant. Unless, perhaps, they set out to overthrow the tribunician power, established by their own ancestors through arms, and to wrest from themselves their own rights and courts — a splendid recompense, surely, when, relegated to marshes and woods, they perceive that the insult and the hatred are theirs, but the rewards in the hands of a few! Why, then, does he advance with so great a train and such high spirits? Because success is a wondrous cloak for vices; and when these are shaken, he will be despised as much as he is now feared — unless, perhaps, it be under the appearance of concord and peace, the names he has given to his crime and his parricide. And in no other way, he says, will the state stand and the war end, than if the commons remain driven from their lands, the bitterest plunder of fellow-citizens, and the right and judgment of all matters remain in his own hands, which belonged to the Roman people. If these things are understood by you to be peace and a settled order, then approve the greatest convulsions and ruin of the state, assent to laws imposed upon you, accept leisure with slavery, and hand down to posterity a precedent for circumventing the commonwealth at the price of its own blood! For my part, although through this supreme office enough had been won for the name of my ancestors, for my dignity and even for my safety, yet it was not my intention to make a private fortune, and a dangerous liberty seemed to me preferable to a quiet servitude. If you approve this, be present, citizens, and, with the gods well aiding, follow Marcus Aemilius, consul, as your leader and guide, to the recovery of liberty.'

Phil. The Speech of Philippus in the Senate

'I should most of all wish, senators, that the state were at peace, or that in its dangers it were defended by the most ready-handed of men, and finally that wicked enterprises were a peril to those who counsel them. But on the contrary all things have been thrown into confusion by sedition, and by those whom it more became to restrain it; and at the last, what the worst and most foolish men have decreed must be carried out by the good and the wise. For war and arms, however hateful to you, yet, because they please Lepidus, must be taken up — unless, perhaps, anyone is resolved to offer peace and to suffer war. Good gods, who still guard this city though our care for it is abandoned! Marcus Aemilius, the basest of all profligate men, of whom it cannot be determined whether he is the worse or the more cowardly, holds an army for the crushing of liberty, and out of contempt has made himself feared; while you, muttering and drawing back, with words and the chants of soothsayers, long for peace rather than defend it, and do not perceive that by the softness of your decrees your dignity is taken from you and his fear from him. And rightly so, since it was from plunder that he won the consulship, and on account of sedition that he gained a province with an army. What would he have got for good deeds, the man to whose crimes you have assigned such rewards? But no doubt those who, to the very last, decreed envoys, peace, concord, and other things of this kind, have earned his gratitude! On the contrary, despised and held unworthy of the commonwealth, they are reckoned in the place of plunder, since out of fear they sought again the peace they had lost.

For my part, from the very beginning, when I saw Etruria conspiring, the proscribed being summoned, the state torn apart by largesses, I thought we should make haste, and I followed the counsels of Catulus along with a few others. But those who extolled the good deeds of the Aemilian house, and said that by pardoning it had increased the greatness of the Roman people, declared that even then Lepidus had nowhere gone forward — and this when he had taken up private arms for the crushing of liberty! Each man, in seeking resources or patronage for himself, corrupted the public counsel. But at that time Lepidus was a brigand with camp-followers and a few cut-throats, no one of whom would have changed his life for a day's wage; now he is proconsul with command — not bought, but given by you — with his lieutenants still lawfully obeying him; and to him flock men of every order, the most corrupt, blazing with want and with desires, driven on by the consciousness of their crimes, men whose rest is in sedition, whose turmoil is in peace. These men sow tumult out of tumult, war out of war: once the henchmen of Saturninus, then of Sulpicius, then of Marius and Damasippus, now of Lepidus. Besides, Etruria and all the remnants of the war are roused, the Spanish provinces are stirred up in arms, Mithridates, on the flank of those revenues by which we are still sustained, watches for the day of war; in short, nothing is wanting for the overthrow of the empire but a fit commander.

And this I beg and implore you, senators, to take heed of, and not to suffer the licence of crime to advance, like a madness, by contagion to the still untouched. For where rewards attend the bad, hardly will anyone be good for nothing. Or do you wait until, his army brought up again, he invades the city with sword and flame? Which is much nearer, from the condition in which he now keeps things, than the passage from peace and concord to civil war. These arms he took up against all things human and divine — not for any wrong of his own or of those for whom he pretends, but for the overthrow of the laws and of liberty. For he is driven and torn by the lust of his soul and the fear of his crimes; void of counsel, restless, trying this and that; he fears quiet, he hates war; he sees that he must do without luxury and licence, and meanwhile abuses your apathy. Nor have I counsel enough to know whether I should call it fear, or cowardice, or madness, that you who seem to wish, each man for himself, that so great an evil, like a thunderbolt, may not touch him, yet make no effort even to ward it off. And consider, I beg you, how the nature of things has been turned about. Formerly public mischief was prepared in secret, defences openly, and thereby the good easily got the better of the bad; now peace and concord are openly disturbed, defended in secret. Those whom these things please are in arms; you are in fear. What do you wait for? Unless, perhaps, you are ashamed or loath to do right. Do the demands of Lepidus move your minds? He says it pleases him that each man's own be restored to him — and he holds what is another's; that the laws of war be annulled — while he himself compels by arms; that the citizenship be confirmed to those whom he denies it was taken from; that for the sake of concord the tribunician power be restored — out of which all discords have been kindled. Basest and most shameless of all men, are the want and the grief of the citizens a care to you? You who have nothing at home except what is got by arms or by wrong! You seek a second consulship as if you had given back the first; by war you seek concord, by which the concord won is overthrown; a traitor to us, faithless to those of yours, an enemy of all good men. How is it that you are ashamed before neither men nor gods, whom you have outraged by breach of faith or by perjury? Since you are such a man, hold to your purpose and keep your arms, I urge you, and do not, by prolonging the sedition, restless yourself, hold us in anxiety. Neither the provinces, nor the laws, nor the household gods suffer you to be a citizen. Go on as you have begun, that you may find your deserts as soon as may be.

But you, senators, how long by hesitating will you suffer the state to be unguarded, and try arms with words? Levies have been held against you, monies have been wrung from the public and from private purses, garrisons withdrawn and imposed: laws are dictated at his caprice, while meanwhile you make ready your envoys and your decrees. The more eagerly, by Hercules, you sue for peace, the fiercer the war will be, when he perceives that he is sustained more by your fear than by equity and right. For he who says he hates disorder and the slaughter of citizens, and on that account keeps you unarmed while Lepidus is armed, counsels that, when you might be doing it, you should rather suffer the things that must be endured by the conquered. So he counsels peace to you from him, war upon you from himself. If these things please you, if so great a torpor has overwhelmed your minds that, forgetful of the crimes of Cinna — at whose return into the city the glory of this order perished — you are nonetheless about to commit yourselves and your wives and children to Lepidus, what need of decrees, what need of the help of Catulus? Indeed both he and the other good men care for the state in vain. Do as you please; provide for yourselves the patronage of Cethegus and of the other traitors, who long to renew rapine and conflagrations and again to arm their hands against the household gods. But if liberty and the true good rather please you, decree things worthy of the name, and add courage to brave men. A new army is at hand; besides, the colonies of veteran soldiers, all the nobility, the best of leaders: fortune follows the better side. Already those forces gathered by our apathy will melt away. Therefore I move as follows: since Marcus Lepidus is leading to the city an army got together by private design, with the basest men and the enemies of the state, against the authority of this order, that Appius Claudius the interrex, with Quintus Catulus the proconsul and the others who hold command, be a guard to the city and take care that the commonwealth suffer no harm.'

Cott. The Speech of Gaius Cotta to the Roman People

'Citizens, many perils at home and in the field, many adversities have been mine, of which some I have endured, some I have repelled by the aid of the gods and by my own valour; in all of which my spirit never failed the task, nor my diligence the resolution: prosperity and adversity changed my resources, not my character. But, on the contrary, in these present miseries all things, together with fortune, have deserted me. Besides, old age, grievous of itself, doubles my care — for to me, wretched, my course of life now run, it is not granted to hope even for an honourable death. For if I am a parricide toward you, and, twice born here, hold cheap my household gods and my country and the supreme command, what torment for me living is enough, or what punishment for me dead? Indeed, by my crime I have outdone all the punishments told of in the world below.

From my earliest youth, as a private man and in the magistracies, I have lived before your eyes: those who wished to use my tongue, my counsel, my money, have used them; nor did I exercise a cunning eloquence, or my talent, for evil-doing. Most eager for private goodwill, I took upon myself the greatest enmities for the sake of the commonwealth; by which, overcome together with it, when, needing the help of others, I looked for more evils, you, citizens, gave back to me again my country and my household gods, with vast dignity. For such benefits I should hardly seem thankful enough, even if I yielded up my life to each of you one by one, which I cannot. For life and death are the rights of nature: but that you live with your fellow-citizens without disgrace, your reputation and fortunes unimpaired — that is given as a gift, and so received.

You made us consuls, citizens, when the state was most beset both at home and in war. For the commanders in Spain demand pay, soldiers, arms, grain, and the situation compels it, since, by the defection of the allies and the flight of Sertorius through the mountains, they can neither contend in battle nor procure what is useful. Armies are maintained in Asia and Cilicia because of the excessive power of Mithridates; Macedonia is full of enemies, and no less so the coast of Italy and of the provinces — while meanwhile the revenues, small and made uncertain by the wars, scarcely sustain a part of the costs: so that we sail with a smaller fleet to protect the supply-routes than before. If these things have been brought upon us by our own treachery or apathy, act as anger prompts, and exact punishment: but if our common fortune is the harsher, why do you begin upon courses unworthy of you and of us and of the state? And I, to whose age death is nearer, do not pray it off, if by it any inconvenience is taken from you; nor could I, by the natural decay of my body, make a more honourable end of life than for your safety. Here I stand, Gaius Cotta, consul; I do what our ancestors often did in harsh wars: I devote and surrender myself for the commonwealth. Then look about you, to whom you may entrust it; for such an honour no good man will want, when an account must be rendered of fortune and of the sea and of war waged by others, or one must die in disgrace. Only keep this in your minds, that I was cut down not for crime or for greed, but that, willingly, in return for the greatest benefits, I gave my life as a gift. By yourselves, citizens, and by the glory of your ancestors, endure adversity and take counsel for the commonwealth. Much care is bound up with supreme command, many vast toils, which you refuse in vain, while you seek the opulence of peace, when all the provinces, kingdoms, seas and lands are harsh or worn out with wars.'

Pomp. The Letter of Gnaeus Pompeius to the Senate

'If I had undertaken so many toils and dangers against you and the country and the household gods, as often as from my earliest youth, under my leadership, the most wicked enemies have been routed and safety won for you, you would have decreed against me in my absence nothing more than what you are now doing, senators — me whom, thrown out against my age into a most savage war with an army of the highest merit, you have, so far as in you lies, destroyed with famine, the most wretched death of all. Was it with this hope that the Roman people sent its sons to war? Are these the rewards for our wounds and for the blood so often shed for the commonwealth? Worn out with writing and sending envoys, I have consumed all my private resources and hopes, while meanwhile over three years scarcely a year's expenses have been given me by you. By the immortal gods, do you think that I can either supply the place of the treasury, or maintain an army without grain and pay?

For my part, I confess that I set out to this war with more zeal than calculation, since, having received from you only the name of command, in forty days I got together an army and drove the enemy, already pressing on the very neck of Italy, back from the Alps into Spain. Through them I opened a route different from Hannibal's, and more convenient for us. I recovered Gaul, the Pyrenees, Lacetania, the Indigetes, and with new and far fewer soldiers I withstood the first onset of the victorious Sertorius, and passed the winter in camp among the most savage enemies, not in the towns, nor to win popularity for myself. Why should I count up the battles, or the winter expeditions, the towns destroyed or recovered? Since deeds avail more than words. The capture of the enemy's camp at Sucro, and the battle at the river Durius, and the destruction of the enemy commander Gaius Herennius along with the city of Valentia and his army, are clear enough to you. For these things, O grateful senators, you give back want and famine. And so the condition of my army and that of the enemy is alike; for pay is given to neither, and either, as victor, can come into Italy. Of this I warn you, and beg you to take heed, and not to force me by necessity to look to my own private interest. Hither Spain, where it is not held by the enemy, we or Sertorius have wasted to utter destruction, save for the cities on the coast: they are, moreover, a cost and a burden to us. Gaul last year fed the army of Metellus with pay and grain, and now, after a bad harvest, can scarcely keep itself alive. I have consumed not only my family estate but even my credit. You alone remain: unless you come to the rescue, against my will and though I forewarn you, the army will cross over from here into Italy, and with it the whole war of Spain.'

Macr. The Speech of Macer, Tribune of the Plebs, to the Plebs

'If, citizens, you judged too little the difference between the right left to you by your ancestors and this servitude prepared for you by Sulla, I should have had to discourse to you at length, and to teach you for what wrongs, and how often, the armed plebs seceded from the patricians, and how it provided itself with tribunes of the plebs as the champions of all its rights. As it is, it remains only to exhort, and to be the first to go by the road along which I judge that liberty must be seized. Nor does it escape me how great the resources of the nobility are, against which, alone and without power, I am beginning, with the empty show of a magistracy, to drive them from their mastery, and how much more safely a faction of the guilty acts than do the innocent alone. But, besides the good hope I have from you, which has conquered fear, I have determined that for a brave man the adversities of a struggle for liberty are preferable to never having struggled at all.

Although all the others, created to defend your rights, have turned all their power and their commands against you, out of favour, or hope, or for rewards, and think it better to do wrong for hire than to do right for nothing: so all of them have now given way into the mastery of a few, who under a military title have seized the treasury, the armies, the kingdoms, the provinces, and hold a citadel out of your spoils — while meanwhile, like a herd of cattle, you, the multitude, offer yourselves to single men to be held and used, stripped of all that your ancestors left you; except that, by your own votes, you appoint for yourselves, as once your guardians, so now your masters. And so they have all gone over to that side; but presently, if you recover your own, most of them will come over to you. For few have the spirit to defend what pleases them; the rest belong to the stronger. Or do you doubt whether anything can stand in your way if you go forward with one mind — you, whose very sloth and apathy they have dreaded? Unless, perhaps, Gaius Cotta, a consul from the middle of their faction, restored certain rights to the tribunes of the plebs from any motive other than fear. And although Lucius Sicinius, who first dared to speak of the tribunician power while you muttered, was struck down — yet they feared the hatred of it before you grew weary of the wrong. At which I cannot wonder enough, citizens; for you have learned that your hope was vain. When Sulla was dead, who had imposed a wicked servitude, you believed there was an end of the evil: there arose one far more savage, Catulus. A tumult broke out in the consulship of Brutus and Mamercus. Then Gaius Curio lorded it even to the destruction of an innocent tribune. You saw with what spirit Lucullus last year went against Lucius Quintius. And how great are the disturbances now stirred up against me! All of which, surely, would be carried on in vain, if they were going to make an end of their mastery before you of your servitude — especially when in these civil wars other things have been alleged, but the contest on both sides has been over the mastery of you. And so the rest, born of licence or hatred or greed, blazed up for a time; one thing alone has remained, which both sides have sought, and which has been snatched away for the future: the power of the tribunate, the weapon forged by your ancestors for liberty. Of this I warn you, and beg you to take heed, and not, by changing the names of things to suit your cowardice, to call leisure what is servitude. To enjoy that very leisure — if falsehood and dishonour have triumphed over truth and honour — is not now possible: it would have been, had you been wholly quiet. Now they are watching, and unless you conquer, since every wrong is the safer for its weight, they will hold you the more tightly.

What, then, do you advise? — one of you might object. First of all, that this habit you keep up be given up: a nimble tongue, a cowardly spirit, mindful of liberty no further than the place of assembly. Then — not to call you to those manly deeds by which your ancestors provided for themselves tribunes of the plebs, a patrician magistracy, and votes free from patrician authority — since all power, citizens, is in your hands, and the orders you now obey for others you could surely carry out or not carry out for yourselves, do you wait for Jupiter or some other god to be your counsellor? Those great commands of the consuls and decrees of the senators, you make valid by executing them, citizens, and you hasten of your own accord that the licence against you be increased and aided. Nor do I urge you to avenge wrongs, but rather to long for rest; nor to make discords, as they charge, but, wishing an end of them, I demand back our rights by the law of nations; and if they obstinately keep them, I shall counsel not arms, nor secession, but only that you offer no more of your blood. Let them wield and hold their commands in their own way, let them seek triumphs, let them pursue Mithridates, Sertorius, and the remnants of the exiles with the images of their ancestors: let danger and toil be far from those who have no share in the profit. Unless, perhaps, that sudden corn-law is meant to balance your services — by which, however, they have valued the liberty of all at five measures apiece, which is in fact no more than the rations of a prison. For just as in a prison death is kept off by that scant allowance, while one's strength wastes away, so a thing so small neither frees a man from the care of his household, nor satisfies the slenderest hopes of every coward. Yet, however ample it were, since it was held out as the price of slavery, what stupor it would be to be deceived, and on top of it to owe gratitude for the wrong done to your own affairs! Beware the trick. For in no other way are they strong against the whole body, nor will they attempt it. And so at one and the same time they prepare soothing baits and put you off until the coming of Gnaeus Pompeius — the very man whom, when they feared him, they raised upon their own necks, and presently, the fear removed, tear at. Nor are they ashamed, men who give themselves out as the champions of liberty, that so many men dare not, without one leader, either remit a wrong or be unable to defend their right. To me, indeed, it is sufficiently clear that Pompeius, a young man of such great glory, would rather be the chief man with your goodwill than be the partner of their mastery and the foremost author of restoring the tribunician power. But, citizens, formerly you single citizens had your protection in many men, not all of you in one man; nor could any one mortal give or take away such things. And so enough has been said in words, for the matter does not halt through ignorance. But some torpor, I know not what, has seized you, by which you are moved neither by glory nor by disgrace, and you have exchanged all things for present cowardice, thinking yourselves abundantly free, no doubt because your backs are spared and you are free to go this way and that — the gifts of your rich masters. And these same privileges are not for the country-folk, but they are cut down amid the quarrels of the powerful, and given as presents to the magistrates for the provinces. So it is fought and won by a few: the plebs, whatever happens, counts as conquered, and will count so more day by day, if indeed they keep their mastery with greater care than you reclaim your liberty.'

Mithr. The Letter of Mithridates

'King Mithridates, to King Arsaces, greeting. All who are entreated in their prosperity to a partnership in war ought to consider whether they may then keep the peace, and next whether what is sought is sufficiently righteous, safe, and glorious, or dishonourable. If it were possible for you to enjoy unbroken peace, were it not for enemies near at hand and most wicked, and if a distinguished fame awaited you should you crush the Romans, I should not dare to seek your alliance, and I should vainly hope to mix my misfortunes with your good fortune. And yet the very things that seem able to hold you back — your anger against Tigranes over the recent war, and my own affairs being too little prosperous — if you will judge them truly, will most of all urge you on. For he, being in your debt, will accept just such an alliance as you wish; while to me, with many things snatched away, fortune has given the experience of giving good counsel, and — what is desirable for the prosperous — I, though not at my strongest, furnish an example by which you may the more rightly order your own affairs.

For the Romans have one and the same cause, and that an old one, for making war upon all nations, peoples, and kings: a deep-seated lust for empire and for riches. By this they first took up war with Philip, king of the Macedonians, pretending friendship while they were pressed by the Carthaginians. When Antiochus came to his aid, they turned him aside by treachery, with the concession of Asia; and soon, Philip being broken, Antiochus was stripped of all the land this side of the Taurus, and of ten thousand talents. Then Perses, the son of Philip, after many and various struggles, was received into their good faith before the gods of Samothrace, and the cunning men and inventors of perfidy, because they had granted him his life by agreement, killed him by depriving him of sleep. Eumenes, whose friendship they gloriously parade, they first betrayed to Antiochus as the price of peace; afterward, made the keeper of captured territory, by their exactions and insults they reduced him from a king to the most wretched of slaves, and, having forged an unnatural will, they led his son Aristonicus in triumph in the fashion of an enemy, because he had sought his father's kingdom; Asia was beset by them. Finally, on the death of Nicomedes, they plundered Bithynia, though there was a son, born of Nysa whom Nicomedes had called queen, whose legitimacy was beyond doubt.

For why should I name myself? — me, cut off on every side from their empire by kingdoms and tetrarchies, whom, because the report was that I was rich and would not be a slave, they provoked to war through Nicomedes, though I was not ignorant of their wickedness and had earlier called to witness, of what came to pass, the Cretans — the only free people of all at that time — and king Ptolemy. And I, avenging my wrongs, drove Nicomedes from Bithynia, and recovered Asia, the spoil of king Antiochus, and lifted from Greece a grievous servitude. But the basest of slaves, Archelaus, betraying my army, hindered my undertakings. And those whom cowardice or a crooked cunning kept from arms, that they might be safe through my toils, are paying the bitterest penalties: Ptolemy, putting off the war from day to day by bribes; the Cretans, already once attacked, and destined to have no end of it but destruction. For my part, when I perceived that, on account of their own internal troubles, my battles were postponed rather than peace granted — Tigranes refusing, who now too late approves my words, you being far removed, all the others being in their power — I nevertheless began the war again, and routed Marcus Cotta, the Roman commander, by land at Chalcedon, and stripped him by sea of a most beautiful fleet. At Cyzicus, while I lingered in the siege with a great army, grain failed, no one round about lending aid; at the same time winter shut off the sea. So, attempting to withdraw without the enemy's force into my ancestral kingdom, I lost the best of my soldiers, with my fleets, in shipwrecks at Parium and Heraclea. Then, my army restored at Cabira, and after various battles between me and Lucullus, want again came upon us both. He had at hand the kingdom of Ariobarzanes, untouched by war; I, with all the places about laid waste, withdrew into Armenia. And the Romans, following not me but their own habit of overthrowing all kingdoms, because they kept my multitude from fighting in the narrow places, parade the imprudence of Tigranes as a victory.

Now, I beg you, consider whether you think that, with us crushed, you will be the stronger for resisting, or that there will be an end of the war. I know well that you have great resources of men, of arms, and of gold; and for this reason you are sought by us for an alliance, by them for plunder. But my counsel is this: that, with the kingdom of Tigranes intact, with my soldiers skilled in war, far from home, with little labour, and through our bodies, we should finish the war — by which we can neither conquer nor be conquered without danger to you. Or do you not know that the Romans, after the Ocean made an end to their progress westward, turned their arms hither? That from the beginning they have had nothing except what was seized — home, wives, lands, empire? Once vagabonds without country or parents, founded as the plague of the whole world; whom nothing human or divine restrains from dragging off and destroying allies and friends, those near and those far, the weak and the powerful, and from holding all things that are not subject to them, and most of all kingdoms, as hostile? For few men desire liberty, the greater part want just masters; we are suspected of being their rivals, and of being avengers ready in due time. But you, who have Seleucia, the greatest of cities, and the kingdom of Persis renowned for its riches — what do you expect from them but deceit for the present, and war hereafter? The Romans have arms ready against all men, the sharpest against those whose conquest yields the greatest spoils; by daring, by deceit, and by sowing wars out of wars, they have grown great. By this habit they will destroy everything, or perish. And this is not hard to bring about, if you on the side of Mesopotamia, and we on the side of Armenia, surround an army without grain and without reinforcements, kept unharmed thus far by fortune or by our own faults. And that fame will follow you, that, having set out to aid great kings, you crushed the brigands of the nations. This I advise and urge you to do, lest you prefer to put off your own ruin by ours, rather than to become the victor through alliance.'