Book 2

pr.1. Having explored the rich and powerful kingdom of Nature, I shall set my pen to the ancient and memorable institutions both of our city and of foreign nations: for it is worthwhile to learn what the elements were of this life, which we live happily under the best of princes, so that the regard for them too may bring some profit to our present manners.

1.1. ON ANCIENT INSTITUTIONS. Among the ancients nothing was done, neither in public nor even in private, without an auspice first being taken. From this custom auspices are even now interposed at weddings, who, although they have ceased to seek auspices, yet by the very name retain the traces of the old usage.

1.2. The women dined sitting beside the men who reclined. This custom passed from the intercourse of men to the divine: for at the feast of Jupiter, he himself was invited to dinner upon a couch, but Juno and Minerva upon chairs. This kind of strictness our own age preserves more diligently on the Capitol than in its own houses, doubtless because it matters more that the discipline of goddesses should be maintained than that of women.

1.3. Women who had been content with a single marriage were honoured with the crown of chastity: for they judged that mind in particular to be uncorrupted, of a matron of sincere fidelity, which knew not how to leave the bed of its laid-aside virginity, believing that the experience of many marriages was, as it were, a sign of a certain lawful intemperance.

1.4. No divorce between wife and husband occurred from the founding of the city to the hundred and fiftieth year. The first, however, was Sp. Carvilius, who dismissed his wife on the ground of barrenness. He, although he seemed moved by a tolerable reason, yet was not free of blame, because they judged that not even the desire for children ought to have been preferred to conjugal fidelity.

1.5. But that matronly honour might be the safer under the protection of modesty, they did not permit one who was summoning a matron to law to touch her body, so that her robe might be left inviolate by the touch of another's hand. The use of wine was once unknown to Roman women, lest, of course, they should slip into some disgrace, since the nearest step from Father Liber to intemperance is wont to lead to unlawful love. But that their chastity might not be gloomy and harsh, but tempered by an honourable kind of affability—for with their husbands indulging them they used abundant gold and much purple—in order to make their beauty more becoming, they reddened their hair with ash with the greatest diligence: for then no eyes of those lying in wait for others' marriages were feared, but both to see chastely and to be looked upon was guarded by mutual modesty.

1.6. But whenever some quarrel had arisen between husband and wife, they would come to the chapel of the goddess Viriplaca, which is on the Palatine, and there, having spoken in turn what they wished, with the strife of their minds laid aside, they would return in concord. The goddess is said to have obtained this name from the appeasing of husbands; she is indeed to be venerated, and perhaps to be worshipped with special and choice sacrifices, inasmuch as she is the guardian of daily and domestic peace, in an equal yoke of affection rendering, by her very title, the honour owed by women to the majesty of husbands.

1.7. Such was the modesty between spouses: what, does it not appear consistent among the other ties of kinship? For, that I may signify its greatest force by the smallest indication, for a long time neither did a father bathe with his grown son, nor a father-in-law with his son-in-law. It is therefore manifest that as much reverence was paid to blood and affinity as to the immortal gods themselves, since amid those so sacred bonds it was believed no more lawful to strip oneself than in some consecrated place.

1.8. Our ancestors also instituted a solemn banquet and called it the Caristia, to which no one was admitted except kinsmen and relations by marriage, so that, if any quarrel had arisen among persons closely related, it might be removed amid the sacred rites of the table and the cheerfulness of minds, with promoters of concord brought in.

1.9. Youth rendered to old age such heaped-up and circumspect honour, as though the elders were the common fathers of the young men. Wherefore on the day of a senate the young men would escort to the senate-house some one of the conscript fathers, either a kinsman or a friend of their father, and, fixed before the doors, would wait until they should discharge also the duty of escorting him back. By this voluntary station they strengthened both their bodies and their minds for sustaining public duties without flagging, and were themselves teachers, by the modest rehearsal of toil, of the virtues that were soon to come to light. When invited to dinner, they diligently asked who would be present at that banquet, lest they should anticipate the arrival of their elders by reclining first; and when the table was removed, they suffered the elders to rise and depart before them. From which it appears how sparing and how modest a manner of speech they were accustomed to use at the time of dinner too, when these were present.

1.10. The elders at banquets used to sing, to the flutes, the outstanding deeds of their forefathers comprised in song, so that they might make the youth more eager to imitate them. What is more splendid, what indeed more useful than this contest? The young rendered to the old their due honour, and the age that had finished its course attended with the fuel of its ardour those entering on the active life. What Athens, what school, what foreign studies should I prefer to this domestic discipline? Thence arose the Camilli, the Scipios, the Fabricii, the Marcelli, the Fabii; and—that I may not be too long by running through, all together, the several luminaries of our empire—thence, I say, that most illustrious part of heaven, the divine Caesars, shone forth.

2.1. So greatly, moreover, were they held by love of their country, that for many generations no senator divulged the secret counsels of the conscript fathers. Q. Fabius Maximus alone, and he himself through imprudence, told what had been done in secret in the senate-house concerning the declaring of the third Punic war to P. Crassus, who was returning home as he himself was seeking the country, on the road, remembering that he had been made quaestor three years before, but not knowing that he had not yet been enrolled by the censors in the senatorial order—the one way by which entry into the senate-house was given even to those who had already held magistracies. But although the error of Fabius was honest, yet he was vehemently rebuked by the consuls: for they never wished silence, the best and safest bond of conducting affairs, to be weakened. Therefore, when Eumenes, king of Asia, most devoted to our city, had announced to the senate that war was being prepared by Perseus against the Roman people, it could not be known what either he had said or the fathers had answered until it was learned that Perseus had been captured. Faithful and deep was the breast of the state, fortified by the senate-house and the wholesomeness of silence and entrenched on every side, whose threshold those entering put off their private affection and put on the public. And so you would believe that not merely one man, but no one, had heard what had been committed to the ears of so many.

2.2. How greatly, moreover, the magistrates of old bore themselves in maintaining their own majesty and that of the Roman people may be recognized from this, that among the other tokens of preserving their gravity they also guarded this with great persistence, never to give answers to Greeks except in Latin. Indeed they compelled even those very men, after shaking off the volubility of tongue in which they are most powerful, to speak through an interpreter, and that not only in our city but even in Greece and Asia, doubtless so that the honour of the Latin voice might be spread more venerably through all nations. Nor were they lacking in zeal for learning, but they judged that in no matter ought the Greek cloak to be set under the toga, deeming it unworthy that the weight and authority of empire should be surrendered to the allurements and sweetness of letters.

2.3. Wherefore you are not to be condemned on the charge of rustic harshness, C. Marius, because you were unwilling that your old age, crowned with a twin laurel, illustrious with Numidian and German trophies, should, though conqueror of a conquered nation, be made more polished by eloquence—lest, I suppose, by the exercise of a foreign talent you should come forth a late deserter from the rites of your fathers. Who, then, threw open the door to this custom, by which now the ears of the senate-house are deafened with Greek pleadings? As I think, Molo the rhetorician, who sharpened the studies of M. Cicero: for it is established that he, before all foreigners, was heard in the senate without an interpreter. This honour he took not undeservedly, since he had assisted the highest force of Roman eloquence. Of conspicuous good fortune is the municipality of Arpinum, whether you wish to look upon the most glorious contemner of letters or the most abundant fountain of them.

2.4. With the greatest diligence, moreover, our ancestors retained this custom, that no one should interpose himself between the consul and the nearest lictor, although he might be walking together with him for the sake of duty. A son alone, and he a boy, had the right of walking before his father the consul. This custom was so persistently retained that Q. Fabius Maximus, five times consul, a man both long since of the highest authority and then of extreme old age, when invited by his son the consul to walk between him and the lictor, lest he should be crushed by the crowd of the enemy Samnites, to whose parley they were going down, was unwilling to do it. The same man, sent by the senate as a legate to his son the consul at Suessa Pometia, after he noticed that he had come forward, for the sake of his office, outside the walls of the town, indignant that of the twelve lictors no one had bidden him dismount from his horse, full of anger persisted in sitting. When his son perceived this, he ordered the nearest lictor to attend upon him. Obeying this voice at once, Fabius said, "Not, my son, have I despised your supreme authority, but I wished to test whether you knew how to act the consul: nor am I ignorant what is owed to the reverence of a father, but I judge public institutions to be of more weight than private affection."

2.5. Having related the praises of Q. Fabius, there offer themselves men of wonderful steadfastness, who, sent as legates by the senate to Tarentum to demand redress, when they had received there the gravest insults—one even being befouled with urine—being brought into the theatre, as is the custom of Greece, carried out their embassy in the words in which they had received it. Of what they had suffered they did not complain, lest they should speak anything beyond what had been commanded; and the regard for ancient custom implanted in their breasts could not be shaken loose by the grief which is felt most gravely from an insult. Truly, Tarentine state, you sought the end of enjoying the wealth in which you had long abounded to the point of envy: for while, puffed up by the splendour of your present fortune, you fastidiously valued the support of rugged virtue, propped on itself alone, you rushed, blind and senseless, upon the most powerful point of our empire.

2.6. But that I may pass from manners ruined by luxury to the most severe institutions of our forefathers, formerly the senate kept its assiduous station in that place which even today is called the Senaculum: nor did it wait to be summoned by an edict, but, called thence, came straightway into the senate-house, esteeming him a citizen of doubtful praise who discharged the duties owed to the state not of his own accord but at command, because whatever is compelled by authority is credited rather to him who exacts it than to him who renders it.

2.7. This too must be recalled to memory, that it was not permitted to the tribunes of the plebs to enter the senate-house, but, with benches placed before the doors, they examined the decrees of the fathers with the most attentive care, so that, if they disapproved any of them, they would not suffer them to be ratified. And so to old decrees of the senate the letter C used to be subscribed, and by this mark it was signified that the tribunes too had given their assent. They, although they kept watch on behalf of the interests of the plebs and were occupied in restraining commands, yet allowed themselves to be furnished with silver vessels and golden rings provided at public expense, so that by the use of such things the authority of the magistrates might be more adorned.

2.8. As their majesty was enlarged, so their abstinence was most tightly bound: for the entrails of the victims sacrificed by them, carried to the quaestors of the treasury, were sold; and in the sacrifices of the Roman people there was, along with the worship of the immortal gods, also the self-restraint of men, our commanders learning at those altars how holy hands they ought to keep. And so much was attributed to self-restraint that the debts of many were paid off by the senate, because they had administered their provinces with integrity: for those by whose service they saw that the public authority had maintained its splendour abroad, they thought it unworthy and disgraceful to themselves that the dignity of these should collapse at home.

2.9. The youth of the equestrian order, moreover, every year twice graced the city with a spectacle of themselves, under great authors: for the custom of the Lupercalia was begun by Romulus and Remus then, when, exulting with gladness because their grandfather Numitor, king of the Albans, had permitted them to found a city in that place where they had been reared, beneath the Palatine mount, at the exhortation of Faustulus their foster-father, whom Evander the Arcadian had consecrated, having made a sacrifice and slain goats, and being carried away by the cheerfulness of the feast and the more generous wine, the band of shepherds being divided, girded with the skins of the slaughtered victims, they attacked, in jest, those who met them. The memory of this merriment is repeated in the annual round of the festival. But the knights, robed in the trabea, Q. Fabius established should ride past on the Ides of July. The same man, as censor with P. Decius, for the sake of ending the sedition which the elections, reduced to the power of every meanest man, had kindled, distributed the whole forensic crowd into four tribes only and called them urban. By this so wholesome deed, a man otherwise excelling in warlike works was surnamed Maximus.

3.1. Praiseworthy too is the modesty of the people, who, by offering themselves unwearied to the toils and dangers of military service, took care that it should not be necessary for the commanders to enrol under the oath the head-counted poor, whose excessive poverty was suspect, and therefore they did not entrust to these the public arms. But this custom, formed by long usage, C. Marius broke by enrolling the head-counted as soldiers, a citizen otherwise magnificent, but, from the consciousness of his own newness, not at all favourable to antiquity, and mindful that, if the military standards persisted in spurning lowliness, he could be called by a malicious interpreter of virtues a "head-counted commander." And so he judged that fastidious kind of levy ought to be obliterated in the Roman armies, lest the contagion of such a mark should penetrate even to the bruising of his own glory.

3.2. The practice of handling arms was imparted to the soldiers by the consul P. Rutilius, colleague of Cn. Mallius: for he, following the example of no commander before him, summoning trainers of gladiators from the school of C. Aurelius Scaurus, instilled into the legions a subtler method of avoiding and dealing blows, and mingled valour with skill and again skill with valour, so that the one might become braver by the impulse of the other, and the other more cautious by the knowledge of the one.

3.3. The use of light-armed troops was first discovered in that war in which the commander Fulvius Flaccus besieged Capua: for when our cavalry, because they were fewer in number, could not resist the cavalry of the Campanians in their frequent sallies, Q. Navius, a centurion, established that chosen men of nimble body from among the infantry, armed with seven short and curved spears each and protected by a small shield, should join the riders by a swift leap and again slip away by a quick movement, so that, placed beneath the cavalry battle, the infantry might the more easily assail with their weapons both the men and the horses of the enemy; and that novelty of fighting crippled the unique resource of Campanian treachery, and therefore honour was paid to its author Navius by the general.

4.1. The next step from military institutions must be made to the urban camps, that is, the theatres, since these too have often drawn up spirited battle-lines, and, devised for the sake of the worship of the gods and the delight of men, have, not without some blush upon peace, stained pleasure and religion with civil blood for the sake of scenic monstrosities.

4.2. These [contests] were indeed begun by Messala and Cassius as censors. But on the authority of P. Scipio Nasica it was resolved that the whole apparatus of their work should be sold at auction; and it was even provided by a decree of the senate that no one should wish, in the city or within a mile of it, to have set up benches or, sitting, to watch the games, so that, doubtless, even in the relaxation of their minds . . . the manliness of standing, proper to and characteristic of the Roman nation, might be marked.

4.3. For five hundred and fifty-eight years the senate, mingled with the people, was present at the spectacle of the games. But this custom Atilius Serranus and L. Scribonius, as aediles, holding the games of the Mother of the gods, following the opinion of the later Africanus, dissolved by separating the places of the senate and the people; and this matter turned away the mind of the multitude and greatly shook the favour toward Scipio.

4.4. Now I shall trace from its origin the cause of the institution of the games. In the consulship of C. Sulpicius Peticus and C. Licinius Stolo, an intolerable force of pestilence that had arisen had afflicted our state, recalled from warlike works, with care for the domestic and internal evil; and now more help seemed to be placed in some choice and new form of religion than in any human counsel. And so, for the sake of placating the heavenly power, having composed songs, it lent willing ears, until then content with the circus spectacle, which Romulus first celebrated under the name of the Consualia, when the Sabine maidens were carried off. But, as it is the manner of men to pursue small beginnings with persistent zeal, the youth, with venerable words toward the gods, added jesting gestures with a rude and disorderly movement of the body; and this matter gave cause for summoning a player from Etruria. His comely agility, in the ancient manner of the Curetes and Lydians, from whom the Etruscans drew their origin, by its welcome novelty charmed the eyes of the Romans; and because a player was called among them "hister," the name of "histrio" was given to the actor. Then little by little the art of acting crept on to the measures of satires, from which Livius, the first poet of all, transferred the minds of the spectators to the plots of plays; and he, the performer of his own work, when, having been too often recalled by the people, he had worn out his voice, with the accompaniment of a boy and a flute-player brought in, performed the gestures in silence. The Atellan plays, moreover, were summoned from the Oscans. This kind of entertainment, tempered by Italic strictness and therefore free from stigma: for neither is the actor moved from his tribe nor repelled from military service.

4.5. And because, in the case of the other games, it is apparent from their very names whence they are derived, it does not seem absurd to give to the Secular games their own beginning, the knowledge of which is less worn. When the city and fields were being laid waste by a great pestilence, Valesius, a wealthy man of country life, his two sons and a daughter labouring even to the despair of the physicians, seeking warm water for them from the hearth, on bended knees prayed the household Lares to transfer the danger of his children onto his own head. Then a voice arose that he would have them safe, if straightway he should carry them, conveyed down the river Tiber, to Tarentum, and there, with water sought from the altar of Father Dis and Proserpina, restore them. Greatly troubled by this prediction, because both a long and a dangerous voyage was commanded, yet with doubtful hope overcoming his present fear, he immediately carried the boys down to the bank of the Tiber—for he dwelt in his villa near the village Eretum of the Sabine region—and, making for Ostia in a small boat, in the dead of night put in at the Campus Martius; and, desiring to relieve his thirsting sick ones, the fire on the boat failing, he learned from the helmsman that not far off smoke appeared, and, bidden by him to go ashore at Tarentum—that is the name of the place—eagerly seizing a cup, carried, now more joyful, water drawn from the river to the place from which the smoke had arisen, judging that he had found, as it were, certain traces near at hand of the divinely given remedy; and on the ground, which was rather smoking than having any remains of fire, while he more tenaciously grasped at the omen, having gathered light tinder and such fuel as chance offered, by his persistent breath he called forth a flame, and gave the warmed water to the boys to drink. When they had drunk it, lulled in salutary sleep, they were suddenly freed from the long-lasting violence of the disease, and told their father that they had seen in their dreams their bodies wiped over by some one of the gods with a sponge, and that they were bidden that, at the altar of Father Dis and Proserpina, from which the drink had been brought to them, dark victims should be sacrificed, and that couches should be spread and nocturnal games held. He, because he had seen no altar in that place, believing that one was wanted to be set up by himself, went into the city to buy an altar, leaving men to dig the earth down to the solid rock for the sake of laying the foundations. These, executing their master's command, when they had reached, with the earth thrown up, a depth of twenty feet, noticed an altar inscribed to Father Dis and Proserpina. After Valesius had received this from the announcing of his slave, abandoning his plan of buying an altar, he sacrificed black victims, which anciently were called dark, at Tarentum, and held games and couch-spreadings for three nights running, because just so many sons had been freed from danger. His example Valerius Publicola, who was the first consul, following in his zeal to succour the citizens, at the same altar, with vows publicly proclaimed and black oxen slain—males to Dis, females to Proserpina—and with a couch-spreading and games held for three nights, buried the altar with earth, as it had been before.

4.6. Upon the religion of the games, as wealth grew, sumptuousness followed. At its prompting Q. Catulus, imitating Campanian luxury, was the first to cover the gathering of the spectators with the shade of awnings. Cn. Pompeius, before all, by the running down of water through channels lessened the summer heat. Claudius Pulcher shaded the stage with a variety of colours, having before stretched over it boards bare of painting. The whole of which C. Antonius bordered with silver, Petreius with gold, Q. Catulus with ivory. The Luculli made it revolving; P. Lentulus Spinther adorned it with silvered theatrical fittings. M. Scaurus introduced costly adornment, formerly clad in tunics dyed with Punic dye, in a choice kind of dress. For the gladiatorial show was first given at Rome in the cattle-market, in the consulship of Ap. Claudius and Q. Fulvius. It was given by Marcus and Decimus, the sons of Brutus Pera, honouring the ashes of their father in funeral memory. The contest of athletes was derived from the munificence of M. Scaurus.

5.1. A gilded statue no one beheld either in the city or in any part of Italy before one was set up by M'. Acilius Glabrio to his father, of equestrian rank, in the temple of Piety. That temple, moreover, he himself had dedicated in the consulship of P. Cornelius Lentulus and M. Baebius Tamphilus, having become master of his vow when King Antiochus was overcome at Thermopylae.

5.2. The civil law, for many generations hidden among the sacred rites and ceremonies of the immortal gods and known only to the pontiffs, Cn. Flavius, born of a freedman father and a scribe, when, to the great indignation of the nobility, he had been made curule aedile, made public, and posted up the calendar almost in the whole forum. When he came to visit his sick colleague and was not received with a place to sit by the nobles, with whose throng the bedroom was filled, he ordered his curule chair to be brought, and sat down in it, the avenger alike of his honour and of the contempt shown him.

5.3. A trial for poisoning, unknown both to Roman manners and to Roman laws, arose from the crime, laid bare, of several matrons. These, when they were destroying their husbands by secret treachery with poison, dragged forth by the information of a single maidservant, a part being condemned by capital judgement, made up the number of a hundred and seventy.

5.4. The college of flute-players, too, is wont to turn the eyes of the common people upon itself in the forum, when, amid public and private serious transactions, masked and with covered heads and veiled in varied dress, it gives forth its concert. From this a licence was derived. Once forbidden to feast in the temple of Jupiter, which they had been wont to do by ancient custom, in anger they betook themselves to Tibur. The senate, not bearing with even mind the sacred rites deserted by their ministry, sought through legates from the people of Tibur that they would, of their grace, restore them to the Roman temples. These, persisting in their resolve, by the pretence of a festive banquet, lulled with wine and sleep, they took care should be carried back into the city on carts. To them both their former honour was restored and the right of this sport was given. The use of masks has, as its cause, the shame of the drunkenness thus circumvented.

5.5. There was also that simplicity of the ancients in taking food, a most sure index at once of their humanity and of their self-restraint: for the greatest men felt no shame to lunch and dine in the open. Nor indeed did they have any feasts which they would have blushed to expose to the eyes of the people. They were so attentive to self-restraint that the use of porridge was more frequent among them than of bread, and therefore in the sacrifices the meal that is called "mola" consists of spelt and salt. The entrails are sprinkled with spelt, and to the chickens, by which the auspices are sought, porridge is thrown. For by the firstfruits and libations of their food they appeased the gods the more effectively the more simply they did so.

5.6. And the other gods indeed they venerated for doing good, but Fever they worshipped with temples that she might do less harm, of which to this day one stands on the Palatine, another in the area of the Marian monuments, a third on the highest part of the Long Street; and into these were carried the remedies which had been bound to the bodies of the sick. These things were devised, with some reasonable use, for soothing the fevers of the human mind. But for the rest, they guarded their healthfulness by the most sure and faithful protection of industry; and, as it were, a kind of mother of their good health was frugality, hostile to luxurious feasts and a stranger to excessive abundance of wine and averse from immoderate use of love.

6.1. The same was felt by the Spartan state, nearest to the gravity of our ancestors, which, obeying the most severe laws of Lycurgus, for a long time withdrew the eyes of its citizens from contemplating Asia, lest, captured by its allurements, they should slip into a more delicate kind of life: for they had heard that thence had flowed sumptuousness and immoderate expense and every kind of unnecessary pleasure, and that the Ionians first had discovered, as no small incitements to luxury, the custom of giving perfume and crowns at a banquet and of setting out a second course. And it is by no means a wonder that men who rejoiced in toil and endurance were unwilling that the most enduring sinews of their fatherland should be loosened and blunted by the contagion of foreign delights, since they saw that the passage from virtue to luxury was considerably easier than from luxury to virtue. That they did not fear this in vain their own leader Pausanias made plain, who, after performing the greatest works, as soon as he gave himself over to the manners of Asia, did not blush to soften his courage by its effeminate refinement.

6.2. The armies of the same state were not wont to go down to fight before they had drawn the warmth of exhortation into their spirits by the concert of the flute and the measure of the anapaestic foot, admonished by the lively and frequent sound of the beat to assail the enemy vigorously. The same men, to dissemble and conceal the blood of their wounds, used in battle Punic-dyed tunics, not lest the sight of them should bring terror to themselves, but lest it should bring any confidence to the enemy.

6.3. The outstanding spirits of warlike valour of the Lacedaemonians the Athenians, most prudent in the manners of peace, follow close behind, among whom idleness, growing slack with languor in its hiding-places, is dragged into the forum just as some offence, and becomes the defendant of a fault not criminal indeed, yet to be blushed at.

6.4. The most holy council of the same city, the Areopagus, used most diligently to inquire what each of the Athenians did and by what gainful occupation he supported himself, so that men, mindful that an account of their manner of life must be rendered, should follow honour.

6.5. The same city first introduced the custom of decorating good citizens with a crown, encircling the famous head of Pericles with two olive twigs joined together, a praiseworthy institution, whether you wish to consider the thing or the person: for honour is the most fruitful nourishment of virtue, and Pericles was worthy that the power of giving such a gift should take its beginning especially from him.

6.6. Come, how memorable is that institution of Athens, that an ungrateful freedman, convicted by his patron, is stripped of the right of freedom! "I forbear," he says, "to have you as a citizen, an impious appraiser of so great a gift, nor can I be brought to believe that he is useful to the city whom I see wicked to my house. Go therefore and be a slave, since you knew not how to be free."

6.7. The same custom the Massilians too practise to this time, conspicuous especially for the gravity of their discipline, their observance of ancient custom, and their affection for the Roman people. They permit three manumissions of the same man to be rescinded, if they learn that the master has been deceived three times by him. The fourth error they think ought not to be relieved, because he has already received the injury by his own fault, who exposed himself to it so often. The same state is a most keen guardian of strictness, giving no entrance to the stage to mimes, whose plots for the greater part contain acts of debauchery, lest the custom of watching such things should take also the licence of imitating them. To all, moreover, who under any pretence of religion seek nourishment for their idleness, it has its gates closed, judging that lying and counterfeit superstition must be removed. Moreover, from the founding of the city there is there a sword by which the guilty are slain, eaten away indeed with rust and scarcely sufficient for its service, but an index of men who preserve, even in the smallest matters, all the monuments of ancient custom. Two chests too lie before their gates, the one in which the bodies of the free, the other in which those of slaves, are conveyed to the place of burial on a cart, without lamentation, without beating of the breast. The mourning for a funeral is ended on the same day by a domestic sacrifice and a banquet of relations brought in: for what does it profit either to indulge human grief or to make envy against the divine power, because it has been unwilling to share its immortality with us? Poison tempered with hemlock is kept at public expense in that state, which is given to him who has shown to the Six Hundred—for that is the name of their senate—the reasons on account of which death ought to be sought by him, the inquiry tempered by a manly benevolence, which neither suffers anyone to depart from life rashly, and offers a swift path of death to him who wisely desires to depart, so that, whether to those who have used adverse or prosperous fortune too much—for either gives a reason for ending the breath, the one that it may not persist, the other that it may not fail—it may be terminated by an approved end.

6.8. This custom of the Massilians I judge to have arisen not in Gaul but to have been transferred thither from Greece, because I noticed that it was preserved also on the island of Ceos, at the time when, making for Asia with Sex. Pompeius, I entered the town of Iulis: for it chanced that then a woman of the highest dignity there, but already of extreme old age, having rendered a reason to her fellow-citizens why she ought to depart from life, had resolved to make away with herself by poison, and esteemed it highly that her death should be made more illustrious by the presence of Pompey. Nor did that man, as he was furnished with all virtues, so also most fully with the praise of humanity, bear to spurn her prayers. He came therefore to her, and with most eloquent speech, which flowed from his mouth as if from some blessed fountain of eloquence, having long tried in vain to recall her from her undertaken resolve, at last suffered her to carry out her purpose. She, having passed her ninetieth year, with the greatest soundness both of mind and of body, reclining on a couch spread, as far as could be discerned, more elaborately than in daily custom, and leaning on her elbow, said: "To you indeed, Sex. Pompeius, may the gods—rather those whom I leave than those whom I seek—render thanks, because you have disdained neither to be an exhorter of my life nor a beholder of my death. But for myself, having always experienced the cheerful countenance of fortune, lest, through greed of light, I be compelled to gaze upon a sad one, I exchange the remains of my breath, by a prosperous end, leaving behind me two daughters and a flock of grandchildren as survivors." Then, having exhorted her own people to concord, and having distributed her patrimony among them, and handed over her household worship and domestic rites to her elder daughter, she seized with steadfast right hand the cup in which the poison had been tempered. Then, having poured out libations to Mercury and invoked his divine power, that he might lead her by a peaceful journey to the better part of the infernal abode, with eager draught she drew the deadly potion, and signifying by speech what parts of her body the chill was successively seizing, when she had declared that it was now drawing near to her vitals and her heart, she summoned the hands of her daughters to the last office of pressing shut her eyes. But our people, although they were stupefied by the strange spectacle, yet she dismissed suffused with tears.

6.9. But that I may return to the state of the Massilians, from which I digressed into this byway, it is permitted to no one to enter their town with a weapon, and there is at hand one who, having received it for safekeeping, gives it back to him as he leaves, so that their hospitality, as it is humane to those arriving, so may be safe for themselves too.

6.10. As one leaves their walls, that ancient custom of the Gauls meets us, who, it is handed down by memory, used to give money on loan to be repaid to them in the lower world, because they held it persuaded that the souls of men are immortal. I would call them fools, if these trousered men had not felt the same thing which the cloaked Pythagoras believed.

6.11. Avaricious and given to usury was the philosophy of the Gauls; eager and brave that of the Cimbri and Celtiberians, who in the battle-line exulted with joy, as though about to depart from life gloriously and happily, but lamented in sickness, as though about to perish basely and pitiably. The Celtiberians too thought it impious to survive a battle when he had fallen for whose safety they had devoted their breath. The presence of mind of both is to be praised, because they judged that both the safety of the fatherland must be bravely, and the fidelity of friendship steadfastly, maintained.

6.12. But that nation of Thrace might deservedly claim for itself the praise of wisdom, which, celebrating the births of men with weeping, and funerals with cheerfulness, without any precepts of the learned, saw through the true condition of our state. Let, therefore, the natural sweetness of life, common to all living beings, be set aside, which compels us to do and to suffer many base things, if a somewhat happier and more blessed end than its beginning will be found.

6.13. Wherefore rightly the Lycians, when mourning befalls them, put on women's clothing, so that, moved by the unseemliness of the dress, they may be willing the sooner to cast off foolish grief.

6.14. But why should I praise the bravest men in this kind of prudence? Let the women of the Indians be looked upon, who, when by ancestral custom several are wont to be married to the same man, on the death of the husband come into contest and judgement, which of them he most loved. The victress, exulting with joy, and led by her relations bearing a glad countenance before them, casts herself upon the flames of her husband and is burned with him as the happiest of women; the vanquished remain in life with sadness and grief. Bring forth into the midst Cimbric audacity, add Celtiberian fidelity, join the spirited [wisdom] of Thrace, annex the cunningly sought method of the Lycians in casting off grief: yet to the Indian pyre you will prefer none of these, which wifely devotion, secure of approaching death, mounts in the manner of a marriage-bed.

6.15. To which glory of women I shall append, that from comparison it may appear the more base, a disgrace of Punic women: for at Sicca there is a temple of Venus, into which the matrons used to betake themselves, and going forth thence to gain, by the injury of their bodies they collected their dowries, doubtless about to join honourable marriages by so dishonourable a bond.

6.16. For the institution of the Persians was quite praiseworthy, that they did not look upon their children before they had completed their seventh year, in order that they might bear the loss of little ones with more even mind.

6.17. Not even the kings of Numidia are to be blamed, who, by the custom of their nation, gave a kiss to no mortal: for whatever is placed on a lofty height ought to be free of lowly and worn usage, that it may be the more venerable.

7.pr. ON MILITARY DISCIPLINE. I come now to the chief glory and the support of the Roman empire, by salutary perseverance preserved sound and unimpaired to this time, the most tenacious bond of military discipline, in whose bosom and protection the serene and tranquil condition of blessed peace finds repose.

7.1. P. Cornelius Scipio, to whom the destruction of Carthage gave the surname of his grandfather, sent as consul into Spain to crush the most insolent spirits of the city of Numantia, fostered by the fault of former commanders, at the same moment of time at which he entered the camp, decreed that all things which had been procured for the sake of pleasure should be removed and carried away: for it is established that there then departed thence the greatest number of hucksters and sutlers, together with two thousand harlots. Emptied of this base and shameful bilge, our army, which a little before, through fear of death, had stained itself with the shameful striking of a treaty, with its courage raised and renewed, made level with the ground that fierce and spirited Numantia, burned with fires and laid low in ruins. And so the wretched surrender of Mancinus was a token of military discipline neglected, the most glorious triumph of Scipio the reward of it preserved.

7.2. Following his school, Metellus, when as consul he had received in Africa, in the Jugurthine war, an army corrupted by the excessive indulgence of Spurius Albinus, strove with all the sinews of his command to recall it to the discipline of former military service: nor did he take hold of single parts, but straightway brought the whole back into its proper state. For at once he removed the sutlers from the camp and forbade cooked food to be set out for sale; on the march he suffered no soldier to use the service of slaves and pack-animals, so that they themselves should carry their own arms and provisions; from time to time he changed the place of the camp; and each one he girded most aptly, as if Jugurtha were always present, with rampart and ditch. What, then, did restored self-restraint, what did renewed industry accomplish? It brought forth, namely, frequent victories and many trophies from that enemy whose back the Roman soldier, under an ambitious commander, had not had the fortune to see.

7.3. Well too did those serve military discipline who, the bonds of kinship broken, did not hesitate to exact vengeance and punishment, with disgrace to their own houses, for discipline harmed: for the consul P. Rupilius, in that war which he waged in Sicily against the runaways, ordered Q. Fabius, his own son-in-law, because by negligence he had lost the citadel of Tauromenium, to depart from the province.

7.4. The consul C. Cotta compelled P. Aurelius Pecuniola, joined to him by blood, whom, being about to cross to Messana to renew the auspices, he had set over the siege of Lipara, having been beaten with rods, to discharge military service among the infantry, because by his fault the siege-mound had been burned and the camp had almost been taken.

7.5. Q. Fulvius Flaccus too, as censor, removed from the senate his brother Fulvius, his colleague, because he had dared, without the consul's order, to dismiss home a legion in which he was a military tribune. These examples would not be related so briefly, were I not pressed by greater ones: for what is so difficult to do as to pronounce upon a partner united by the fellowship of birth and ancestral images a dishonourable return to the fatherland, or to apply the insulting blows of rods to one cohering, by the series of an old kinship, in the community of name and family, or to unbend the censorial brow against brotherly affection? Let these singly be granted to states however illustrious, yet they will be seen abundantly furnished with the glory of military discipline:

7.6. but our city, which has filled the whole circle of the world with every kind of wonderful examples, received from the camp, at public cost splendid, in private grievous, the axes dripping with the very blood of the commanders' sons—lest, with the order of military service disturbed, vengeance should be wanting—with a double countenance, uncertain whether first to discharge the office of congratulating or of consoling. Therefore I too, with hesitating mind, embrace you in memory and narrative, most severe guardians of warlike affairs, Postumius Tubertus and Manlius Torquatus, because I perceive that, overwhelmed by the weight of the praise which you have deserved, I shall rather lay bare the feebleness of my talent than represent, as is fitting, your virtue. For you, Postumius, as dictator, ordered A. Postumius—whom you had begotten for propagating the succession of your race and of the sacred rites of your house, whose infancy you had cherished with caresses in your bosom and with kisses, whom as a boy you had instructed in letters, as a youth in arms, holy, brave, loving you alike and your country, because, not by your order but of his own accord, he had advanced from his post and routed the enemy—being victor, to be struck with the axe, and to carry out this command you had strength enough by the service of a father's voice: for I am sure that your eyes, in the clearest light overspread with darkness, could not behold the mighty work of your spirit. You likewise, Torquatus, as consul in the Latin war, ordered your son—because, challenged by Geminus Maecius, leader of the Tusculans, he had gone down to fight without your knowledge—as he was bringing back a glorious victory and splendid spoils, to be hurried off by the lictor and to be slaughtered after the manner of a victim, judging it better that a father should lack a brave son than that the fatherland should lack military discipline.

7.7. Come, with how great a spirit do we suppose L. Quintius Cincinnatus the dictator to have acted at that time when, the Aequiculi having been conquered and sent under the yoke, he compelled L. Minucius to lay down the consulship, because the same enemy had besieged his camp? For he believed unworthy of the highest command one whom not his own valour, but a ditch and rampart, had rendered safe, and to whom it had been no shame to keep the Roman arms shut up, trembling with fear, behind closed gates. Therefore the most imperious twelve fasces, in whose power was the highest honour of the senate and the equestrian order and the whole plebs, and by whose nod Latium and the forces of all Italy were governed, bruised and broken, prostrated themselves to the dictatorial chastisement; and, lest the injured military glory should be unavenged, the consul, the avenger of every offence, was himself punished. By these expiations, so to speak, Mars, father of our empire, wherever in some part there had been a degeneracy from your auspices, was propitiated as to your divine power, by the disgrace of kinsmen and relations and brothers, by the slaughter of sons, by the shameful abdication of consuls.

7.8. Of the same order is what follows. Papirius the dictator, when against his command Q. Fabius Rullianus, the master of the horse, had led the army out into the line, although, the Samnites having been routed, he had returned into the camp, yet, moved neither by his valour nor by his success nor by his nobility, ordered the rods to be made ready and him to be stripped. O wondrous spectacle! Both Rullianus, both the master of the horse, both the victor, with his garment torn and his body despoiled, offered himself to be torn by the lashings of the lictors, so that, by the knotty blows, the blood of the wounds received in the battle being renewed, he might bespatter the titles of the victories which he had just most splendidly won. Then by its prayers the army gave Fabius the occasion of fleeing into the city, where in vain he implored the aid of the senate: for none the less did Papirius persevere in exacting the penalty. And so his father was compelled, after his dictatorship and third consulship, to call the matter before the people, and as a suppliant to seek the aid of the tribunes of the plebs on behalf of his son. Nor by this could the severity of Papirius be checked. But, when he was entreated by all the citizens and by the very tribunes of the plebs, he testified that he was remitting that penalty not to Fabius but to the people and to the tribunician power.

7.9. L. Calpurnius Piso too, the consul, when in Sicily he was waging war against the runaways and C. Titius, a prefect of cavalry, surrounded by a multitude of the enemy, had surrendered his arms to them, afflicted the prefect with these kinds of disgrace: he ordered him, clad in a toga with its borders cut off and girt with a loosened tunic, with bare feet, to be present at the headquarters from morning until night for the whole time of his military service. He also forbade him the company of men and the use of the baths; and the squadrons of cavalry which he had commanded, their horses taken away, he transferred into the wings of the slingers. A great disgrace, indeed, of the fatherland was avenged by an equal disgrace of the guilty, since Piso brought it about that those who, led by greed of life, had granted to runaways most worthy of the cross the setting up of trophies over them, and had not blushed that a shameful yoke should be set by a servile hand upon their liberty, should experience a bitter use of the light, and manfully desire the death which they had effeminately feared.

7.10. No less keenly than Piso did Q. Metellus act. He, when an action was being carried on at Contrebia, ordered five cohorts, which he had placed in a certain post and which had been driven from it by the forces of the enemy, to make for the same post on the instant, not because he hoped that the lost place could be recovered by them, but that he might punish the fault of the past battle by the manifest danger of the following struggle. He decreed also that, if any one of these, fleeing, should make for the camp, he should be slain as an enemy. Compelled by this severity, the soldiers, though their bodies were wearied and their minds entangled in despair of life, yet overcame the unfavourableness of the place and the multitude of the enemy. Necessity, therefore, is the most effective hardener of human weakness.

7.11. In the same province Q. Fabius Maximus, desiring to crush and weaken the spirits of a most fierce nation, having for the time laid aside his most gentle disposition, compelled himself to use severity: for of all those who had deserted from the Roman garrisons to the enemy and had been captured, he cut off the hands, so that, bearing their maimed arms before them, they might strike fear of revolt into the rest. And so their rebellious hands, torn from their bodies and scattered on the bloodied ground, were a warning to the others not to dare to commit the same.

7.12. Nothing was gentler than the elder Africanus. He, however, for the sake of strengthening military discipline, thought that something of bitterness must be borrowed from a cruelty most alien to himself: for, Carthage being conquered, when he had reduced into his power all who from our armies had gone over to the Carthaginians, he punished the Roman deserters more gravely than the Latin: for these he affixed to crosses as fugitives from their fatherland, those he struck with the axe as faithless allies. I shall not pursue this deed further, both because it is Scipio's and because it is not fitting to insult with a servile punishment Roman blood, however deservedly it suffered, especially when it is permitted to pass over to those things which can be related as done without a domestic wound.

7.13. For the later Africanus, the Punic empire being overthrown, cast deserters of foreign nations to wild beasts in the spectacles given to the people;

7.14. and L. Paulus, King Perseus being overcome, laid prostrate men of the same kind and fault to be trampled by elephants, by a most useful example indeed, if nevertheless it is permitted to estimate humbly the deeds of the most excellent men without the reproach of insolence: for military discipline needs a harsh and abrupt kind of chastisement, because strength rests in arms, which, when they depart from the right course, are about to oppress, unless they be oppressed.

7.15. But it is time that mention be made also of those things which now not by individuals but by the whole senate were administered for maintaining and defending the military custom. L. Marcius, a military tribune, when by wonderful valour he had gathered the scattered remnants of the two armies of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, which the Punic arms had consumed in Spain, and by their votes had been created their leader, writing to the senate concerning his deeds, began in this manner: "L. Marcius, propraetor." The conscript fathers were not pleased that he should use the assumption of this honour, because leaders were wont to be created by the people, not by the soldiers. At which time, so unjust, so grievous on account of the immense loss to the state, even a military tribune was to be flattered, since indeed he alone had sufficed to set right the condition of the whole state. But no disaster, no merit was more powerful than military discipline. For it came into their minds with how spirited a severity their ancestors had used in the Tarentine war, in which, with the forces of the state shaken and worn, when they had received a great number of their own captured citizens sent back unbidden by King Pyrrhus, they decreed that of those who had served on horseback should serve in the number of the infantry, and those who had been infantry should be transferred into the auxiliaries of the slingers; and that none of them should pitch his tent within the camp, nor gird with rampart or ditch a place outside the assigned one, nor have a tent of skins. They proposed, moreover, a return for these to the former order of military service, if anyone should have carried off two sets of spoils from the enemy. Crushed by these punishments, out of the disgraceful little gifts of Pyrrhus they came forth most keen enemies. An equal anger the senate unsheathed against those who at Cannae had deserted the state: for when by the gravity of its decree it had banished them beyond the condition of the dead, having received a letter from M. Marcellus, that it might be permitted him to use their service for the storming of Syracuse, it wrote back that they were unworthy to be received into the camp; but that it permitted him to do what he should judge expedient for the state, provided that none of them should be free from duty, or be presented with a military gift, or come into Italy so long as the enemy were in it. Thus is virtue wont to hate nerveless spirits. Come, how grievously the senate took it that they had suffered the consul Q. Petilius, fighting most bravely against the Ligurians, to be slain! It willed that to the legion neither the pay of the year should accrue nor the wage be given, because for the safety of the commander they had not offered themselves to the weapons of the enemy. And that decree of the most ample order stood forth as a splendid and eternal monument of Petilius, beneath which rest his ashes, illustrious by death in the battle-line, by vengeance in the senate-house. With a like spirit, when Hannibal had made him the offer of ransoming six thousand Romans whom he held captured in his camp, the senate spurned the condition, remembering that so great a multitude of armed young men, if they had been willing to die honourably, could not have been basely captured. Of whom I know not whether the disgrace was greater—that their fatherland set no hope, or that their enemy set no fear, in them—the one making light of them as fighting for it, the other as fighting against it. But although the senate kept watch on several occasions severely for military discipline, I know not whether especially then, when it shut up in prison the soldiers who had seized Regium in an unjust war and, their leader Iubellius being dead, had of their own accord chosen as commander M. Caesius, his scribe; and although M. Fulvius Flaccus, tribune of the plebs, gave notice that it should not, contrary to the custom of its ancestors, take vengeance upon Roman citizens, none the less it carried out its resolve. But that this might be accomplished with the less odium, it ordered fifty to be beaten with rods on each single day and struck with the axe, and forbade their bodies to be committed to burial and their death to be mourned.

7e.1. This the conscript fathers did gently, if we are willing to consider the violence of the Carthaginian senate in conducting the business of military service, by which leaders who waged wars with bad counsel, even if prosperous fortune had followed, were yet affixed to the cross, imputing what they had done well to the aid of the immortal gods, what they had done ill to their own fault.

7e.2. But Clearchus, the leader of the Lacedaemonians, used to maintain the discipline of military service by an excellent saying, dinning again and again into the ears of his army that the commander rather than the enemy ought to be feared by the soldiers. By which he openly gave notice that it would come to pass that they should pay with their life the penalty for the battle which they had hesitated to give. And they did not wonder that this was enjoined by their leader, mindful of their mothers' caresses, by which, as they went out to fight, they were admonished that they should either come alive into their sight with their arms, or be brought back dead in their arms. Having received this watchword within their household walls, the Spartan lines fought. But it is enough merely to have looked at foreign instances, since it is permitted to boast of our own much richer and happier examples.

8.pr. Military discipline, keenly maintained, brought forth for the Roman empire the chieftainship of Italy, bestowed the governance of many cities, great kings, and most powerful nations, opened the jaws of the Pontic gulf, handed over the torn-asunder barriers of the Alps and of Mount Taurus, and made the origin from the little hut of Romulus the pinnacle of the whole circle of the world. And since from her bosom all triumphs have flowed, it follows that I should begin to speak of the right of triumphing.

8.1. ON THE RIGHT OF TRIUMPHING. For trifling battles certain commanders desired triumphs to be decreed to themselves. That this might be met, it was provided by law that no one should triumph unless he had slain five thousand of the enemy in a single battle: for our ancestors judged that the honour of our city would be the more lofty not by the number but by the glory of its triumphs. But lest so excellent a law should be obliterated by the desire for the laurel, it was supported by the aid of another law, which L. Marcius and M. Cato, tribunes of the plebs, brought: for it threatens a penalty to commanders who should have dared to report to the senate in writing a false number either of enemy slain in battle or of citizens lost, and orders them, as soon as they have entered the city, to swear before the city quaestors that they have truly written to the senate concerning both numbers.

8.2. After these laws a timely mention of that judgement is to be introduced, in which, concerning the right of triumphing, between most illustrious persons the matter was both pleaded and thoroughly sifted. The consul C. Lutatius and the praetor Q. Valerius had destroyed off Sicily a notable fleet of the Carthaginians. On which account the senate decreed a triumph to the consul Lutatius. But when Valerius desired that it should be decreed to him also, Lutatius denied that this ought to be done, lest in the honour of the triumph the lesser power should be made equal to the greater; and the dispute having gone forward rather obstinately, Valerius challenged Lutatius by a wager, that the Punic fleet had not been crushed under his leadership, and Lutatius did not hesitate to make the counter-stake. And so Atilius Calatinus was agreed upon as judge between them, before whom Valerius pleaded in this manner: that the consul in that battle had lain lame in a litter, but that he himself had discharged all the duties of a commander. Then Calatinus, before Lutatius began his cause, said: "I ask you, Valerius, if you had differed in contrary opinions as to whether or not battle should be given, whether what the consul or what the praetor had commanded would have had the greater weight." Valerius answered that he made no controversy but that the consul's part would have been the prior. "Come then," said Calatinus, "if you had received differing auspices, by whose auspice would the matter rather have stood?" "Likewise," answered Valerius, "the consul's." "Now, by Hercules," said he, "since I have undertaken the dispute between you concerning command and auspice, and you confess that in both your adversary was the superior, there is nothing for me to doubt further. And so, Lutatius, although you have hitherto been silent, I give the suit in your favour." Wonderful judge, in that he did not suffer time to be wasted in a manifest business; more praiseworthy Lutatius, in that he steadfastly defended the right of the most ample honour; but not even Valerius dishonourably, because he sought, for a brave and prosperous battle, a reward, though not lawful, yet . . .

8.3. What would you do with Cn. Fulvius Flaccus, who spurned and rejected the honour of a triumph, so to be sought by others, decreed to him by the senate for affairs well conducted—doubtless not plucking beforehand more than befell him?—for as he entered the city, straightway afflicted by a public inquiry he was punished with exile—so that, if by his insolence he had committed any offence against religion, he might expiate it by punishment.

8.4. Wiser, therefore, were Q. Fulvius, who, Capua being captured, and L. Opimius, who, the Fregellans being compelled to surrender, sought from the senate the power of triumphing, each magnificent for the works he had performed, but neither master of the thing sought—not indeed through any envy of the conscript fathers, to which they never wished an entrance into the senate-house, but through the utmost diligence in observing the law, by which it was provided that a triumph should be decreed for empire enlarged, not for the recovery of what had belonged to the Roman people: for there is as much difference whether you add something or restore what has been taken away, as there is distance between the beginning of a benefit and the end of an injury.

8.5. Indeed the right of which I speak was so guarded that to P. Scipio for Spain recovered, to M. Marcellus for Syracuse captured, a triumph was not decreed, because for managing those affairs they had been sent without any magistracy. Let those now be approved, greedy of any glory whatever, who from deserted mountains and from the piratical beaks of pirate cutters, poor in praise, with hurrying hand plucked the little twigs of the laurel: Spain, torn from the empire of Carthage, and the head of Sicily cut off, Syracuse, could not be joined to triumphal chariots. And by what men? By Scipio and Marcellus, whose very names are the equivalent of an eternal triumph. But, although the senate desired to behold crowned those most illustrious authors of solid and true valour, bearing on their shoulders the safety of their fatherland, yet it thought they should be reserved for a juster laurel.

8.6. To this I shall append the following: it is the custom that the consuls be invited to dinner by the commander who is about to lead a triumph, and then be asked to forbear to come, lest anyone on that day on which he triumphs should be, in the same banquet, of greater authority.

8.7. But although anyone might have done splendid deeds, and most useful to the state, in civil war, yet he was not on that account called "imperator," nor were any thanksgivings decreed, nor did he triumph either in ovation or in a chariot, because, as those victories were necessary, so they were always esteemed mournful, inasmuch as they were won not by foreign but by domestic blood. And so both Nasica slaughtered Ti. Gracchus, and G. Metellus the factions of Opimius, in grief. Q. Catulus, when, with his colleague M. Lepidus together with all the forces of the sedition extinguished, returned into the city bearing before him a moderate joy. C. Antonius too, the victor over Catiline, brought back his swords wiped clean into the camp. L. Cinna and C. Marius had indeed greedily drunk civil blood, but they did not straightway make for the temples and altars of the gods. Now L. Sulla, who completed very many civil wars, whose successes were most cruel and most insolent, when, his power consummated and built up, he led a triumph, conveyed in it many cities of Greece and Asia, but no town of Roman citizens. It is irksome and wearisome to go further through the wounds of the state. The laurel neither did the senate give to anyone, nor did anyone desire it to be given to himself, while a part of the state wept. But to the oak ready hands are stretched forth, where for citizens saved a crown is to be given, with which the doorposts of the house of Augustus triumph in everlasting glory.

9.pr. ON THE CENSORIAL MARK. The most tenacious bond of camp discipline and the diligent observance of military method admonish me to pass over to the censorship, the mistress and guardian of peace: for as the resources of the Roman people surpassed in greatness, by the virtues of its commanders, so probity and self-restraint, examined under the censorial brow, are a work equal in effect to warlike praises: for what does it profit to be vigorous abroad if at home one lives badly? Let cities be stormed, nations be seized, hands be laid upon kingdoms—unless duty and its modesty stand firm in forum and senate-house, the heap of acquired things, made level with heaven, will have no stable seat. It pertains to the matter, therefore, to know, and indeed to recall, the acts of the censorial power.

9.1. The censors Camillus and Postumius ordered those who had come to old age unmarried to pay money, by way of a fine, into the treasury, deserving to be punished a second time if in any way they dared to complain of so just an ordinance, when they were rebuked in this manner: "Nature prescribes to you a law of begetting as of being born, and your parents, by rearing you, have bound you, if there is any shame, to the duty of nurturing grandchildren. To this is added that fortune has even granted you a long postponement of discharging this duty, while meanwhile your years have been consumed, empty of the name of husband and father. Go therefore and pay the not-odious contribution, useful to a numerous posterity."

9.2. Their severity M. Valerius Maximus and C. Iunius Brutus Bubulcus, as censors, imitated by a like kind of chastisement: for they removed from the senate L. Annius, because he had repudiated her whom he had taken in marriage as a maiden, without the counsel of any of his friends. But this crime is, I know not whether, greater than the former: for in that the conjugal rites were only spurned, in this they were even injuriously handled. By the best judgement, therefore, the censors deemed him unworthy of entrance to the senate-house;

9.3. just as Porcius Cato deemed L. Flamininus, whom he removed from the number of the senators, because in his province he had struck with the axe a certain condemned man, the time of the punishment having been chosen at the will and for the spectacle of a little woman by whose love he was held. And he could have been restrained by regard for the consulship, which he had held, and by the authority of his brother Titus Flamininus. But, being both censor and Cato, a double example of severity, he resolved that he was the more to be marked, because he had defiled the majesty of the most ample honour by so foul a deed, and had not held it of any account that to the same ancestral images should be ascribed both the eyes of a harlot delighted with human blood and the suppliant hands of King Philip.

9.4. What shall I say of the censorship of Fabricius Luscinus? Every age has told and hereafter will tell that by him Cornelius Rufinus, who had most splendidly discharged two consulships and a dictatorship, was, because he had procured silver vessels of ten pounds' weight, not retained in the senatorial order, as luxurious by a bad example. By Hercules, the very letters of our age seem to me to be stupefied, when they are compelled to lend their service to recording so great a severity, and to fear lest they be thought to commemorate the deeds not of our city: for it is scarcely credible that within the same pomerium ten pounds of silver should have been both a hateful census and that poverty should be held most contemptible.

9.5. M. Antonius, moreover, and L. Flaccus, as censors, removed Duronius from the senate, because, as tribune of the plebs, he had abrogated a law passed for restraining the expenses of banquets. A wonderful cause of the mark: for how shamelessly Duronius mounted the rostra to say these things: "A bridle has been put upon you, Quirites, by no means to be endured. You are bound and constricted by the bitter chain of slavery: for a law has been passed which bids you be frugal. Let us therefore abrogate that command, overgrown with the rust of rough antiquity: for what need is there of liberty, if to those who wish it it is not permitted to perish by luxury?"

9.6. Come, let me bring forth a pair joined by an equal yoke of virtue and a fellowship of honours, but disagreeing in mind by the impulse of rivalry. Claudius Nero and Livius Salinator, in the times of the second Punic war the firmest flanks of the state, how rigorous a censorship they conducted together! For when they were reviewing the centuries of knights, and were themselves still, by the vigour of their age, of their number, when it came to the Pollian tribe, the herald, the name of Salinator being read out, hesitated whether or not he was to be cited by him. When Nero perceived this, he ordered both his colleague to be cited and his horse to be sold, because he had been condemned by the judgement of the people. Salinator too pursued Nero with the same chastisement, adding as a cause that he had not returned into favour with him in sincere faith. To which men, if any of the heavenly powers had signified that it would come to pass that their blood, drawn down through a series of illustrious images, would flow together into the rise of our salutary prince, having laid aside their enmities they would have joined themselves by the closest treaty of friendship, about to leave the fatherland, saved by themselves, to be saved by a common stock. But Salinator did not hesitate to enrol four-and-thirty tribes among the aerarii, because, when they had condemned him, they had afterwards made him consul and censor; and he gave as a pretext the cause that it was necessary that they be held, by one or the other deed, guilty of the charge of rashness or of perjury. One tribe only, the Maecian, he left free of the mark, which by its votes had judged him worthy neither of condemnation nor yet of honour. How steadfast and how very strong a character should we think that man to have been, who could neither be compelled by the sad issue of judgements nor be induced by the greatness of honours to bear himself more flatteringly in the administration of the state?

9.7. A good and great part of the equestrian order too, four hundred young men, bore the censorial mark with patient mind, whom M'. Valerius and P. Sempronius, because, having been ordered to go in Sicily to carry out the work of fortifications, they had neglected to do it, stripped of their public horses and enrolled in the number of the aerarii.

9.8. The censors exacted a penalty with the utmost severity even for base fear: for M. Atilius Regulus and L. Furius Philus took care that M. Metellus the quaestor and several Roman knights, who after the unhappily begun battle of Cannae had sworn that they would depart from Italy with him, should, their public horses taken away, be enrolled among the aerarii. They also affected with a grievous mark those who, when they had come into the power of Hannibal, sent by him as legates to the senate concerning the exchange of captives, and not having obtained what they sought, remained in the city; because it was both fitting to keep faith with Roman blood, and the censor M. Atilius Regulus marked perfidy, whose father had judged it better to expire amid the greatest torments than to deceive the Carthaginians. Now this censorship passed from the forum into the camp, which willed that the enemy should neither be feared nor deceived.

9.9. There follow two examples of the same kind, and it will be enough to have added these. C. Geta, when he had been removed from the senate by the censors L. Metellus and Cn. Domitius, was afterwards made censor. Likewise M. Valerius Messala, grazed by the censorial mark, afterwards obtained the censorial power. Their disgrace sharpened their virtue: for, roused by the blush of it, they laboured with all their strength to seem worthy citizens, to whom the censorship ought rather to be given than offered as a reproach.

10.pr. ON MAJESTY. There is also that, as it were, private censorship—the majesty of famous men, powerful in maintaining its own dignity without the loftiness of tribunals, without the service of attendants: for by a pleasing and agreeable entrance it glides into the minds of men, veiled under the pretext of admiration. Rightly might one call it a long and blessed honour without office.

10.1. For what more could be granted to a consul than was given to Metellus when on trial? When he was pleading his cause for extortion, and his account-books, demanded by the accuser, were carried around among the judges for the inspection of his name, the whole court turned its eyes away from the contemplation of them, lest it should seem to have doubted concerning anything which was entered in them. The judges believed that the proofs of a province sincerely administered must be read by them not in the account-books but in the life of Q. Metellus, deeming it unworthy that the integrity of so great a man should be weighed by a little wax and a few letters.

10.2. But what wonder if due honour was paid by his fellow-citizens to Metellus, when even an enemy did not hesitate to render it to the elder Africanus? For King Antiochus, in the war which he was waging with the Romans, received most honourably his son, intercepted by his soldiers, and, having presented him with royal gifts, sent him back to his father of his own accord and speedily, although he was then especially being driven by him from the bounds of his empire. But the king, and one provoked, preferred to venerate the majesty of a most excellent man rather than to avenge his own grief. To the same Africanus, while he was keeping himself in his villa at Liternum, several leaders of brigands chanced to flock together at the same time to see him. When he supposed that they had come to do violence, he stationed a guard of his household within the house, and was occupied both in spirit and in preparation for repelling them. When the brigands perceived this, having dismissed their men and cast away their arms, they approached the door and announced in a clear voice that they had come to Scipio not as enemies of his life but as admirers of his virtue, seeking the sight and meeting of so great a man as if some heavenly benefit: therefore he need not be troubled to offer himself, secure, to be beheld by them. After his household had reported this to Scipio, he ordered the doors to be unbarred and them to be admitted. They, having venerated the doorposts of the door as if some most holy altar and sacred temple, eagerly grasped the right hand of Scipio, and, having long kissed it, having laid before the vestibule gifts such as are wont to be consecrated to the divine power of the immortal gods, joyful that it had fallen to their lot to have seen Scipio, returned to their homes. What is more lofty than this fruit of majesty, what indeed more agreeable? He appeased the anger of an enemy by the admiration of himself; he saw the longing eyes of brigands at the spectacle of his presence. If the stars, fallen from heaven, should offer themselves to men, they would receive no greater veneration.

10.3. And these things indeed befell Scipio living; but the following befell Aemilius Paulus dead: for when his obsequies were being celebrated, and by chance the chief men of Macedonia were then staying at Rome in the name of an embassy, they of their own accord put themselves beneath the funeral bier. Which will seem somewhat greater, if anyone learns that the front of that bier had been adorned with Macedonian triumphs: for how much they paid to Paulus, on whose account they did not shudder to carry the tokens of the disasters of their nation before the faces of the crowd! Which spectacle added to the funeral the appearance of a second triumph: for twice, Paulus, did Macedonia show you illustrious to our city—unharmed by her spoils, and in death by her shoulders.

10.4. Nor was too little honour paid to the majesty even of your son Scipio Aemilianus, whom by giving in adoption you willed to be the ornament of two families, when the Carthaginians and King Masinissa had him, while quite a young man, sent from Spain into Africa by the consul Lucullus for the sake of seeking aid, as an arbiter of peace, like a consul and a commander. Carthage indeed was ignorant of its own fates: for that glory of rising youth, by the indulgence of gods and men, was being nourished for her destruction, so as to give to the Cornelian clan the former surname Africanus when she was captured, the latter when she was overthrown.

10.5. What is more wretched than condemnation, what than exile? And yet P. Rutilius, struck down by the conspiracy of the publicans, they could not avail to deprive of his authority. To him, as he made for Asia, all the cities of that province sent legates to meet him, awaiting his retirement. One might more justly say that someone was triumphing in this place than going into exile.

10.6. C. Marius too, cast into the depths of the utmost miseries, emerged from the very crisis of his life by the benefit of majesty: for a public slave, by nation a Cimbrian, sent to slay him as he lay shut up in a private house at Minturnae, did not bring himself to attack an old man, unarmed and covered with squalor, though he held a drawn sword, and, blinded by the renown of the man, casting away the steel, fled thence astonished and trembling. The Cimbric calamity, no doubt, dazzled the eyes of the man, and the destruction of his conquered nation shattered his courage—the immortal gods too deeming it unworthy that Marius should be slain by one of that nation which he had wholly destroyed. The people of Minturnae, moreover, captivated by his majesty, preserved unharmed him whom they had already seized and bound, freeing him from the dread necessity of fate. Nor was the most harsh victory of Sulla a terror to them, especially when Marius himself could have deterred them from preserving Marius.

10.7. M. Porcius Cato too the admiration of his brave and sincere life made so venerable to the senate that, when against the will of C. Caesar the consul he was drawing out the day by speaking in the senate-house against the publicans, and on that account by his order was being led by a lictor to prison, the whole senate did not hesitate to follow him. This thing bent the perseverance of that divine spirit.

10.8. While the same man was watching the Floral games, which Messius the aedile was holding, the people blushed to demand that the mime-actresses should be stripped. When he had learned this from Favonius, his closest friend, sitting beside him, he departed from the theatre, lest by his presence he should hinder the custom of the spectacle. As he was going away, the people followed him with mighty applause, and recalled the ancient manner of jests to the stage, confessing that they paid more majesty to him alone than they claimed for their whole selves. By what resources, by what commands, by what triumphs was this granted? The man's patrimony was small, his manners bound by self-restraint, his clients modest, his house closed to ambition, of his paternal line a single image, his brow least flattering—but his virtue perfect in all its numbers. Which indeed brought it about that whoever wishes to signify a holy and excellent citizen defines him under the name of Cato.

10e.1. Some place must be given also to foreign examples, so that, sprinkled upon the domestic, they may delight by their very variety. The bronze statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who tried to free Athens from tyranny, Xerxes, when he had conquered that city, transferred into his own kingdom. Then, after a long interval of time, Seleucus took care that they should be carried back to their former seat. The Rhodians too, when they had been brought to their city, since they had invited them at public expense to hospitality, even placed them on sacred couches. Nothing is happier than this memory, which possesses so much veneration in so very little bronze.

10e.2. How great an honour, moreover, was paid at Athens to Xenocrates, illustrious alike for wisdom and for holiness! When, compelled to give testimony, he had approached the altar, in order to swear, after the custom of that city, that he had reported everything truly, all the judges rose up and proclaimed that he should not take the oath, and what they were afterwards not going to remit to themselves, in giving their own sentence, they thought ought to be conceded to his sincerity.