Book 3

pr.1. I shall touch, as it were, upon certain cradles and first elements of virtue, and shall set down the foretastes given, with sure proof of natural disposition, of a spirit destined in the course of time to attain the highest summit of glory.

1.1. ON NATURAL DISPOSITION. Aemilius Lepidus, while still a boy, advanced into the battle-line, slew an enemy, and saved a fellow-citizen. The witness of so memorable a deed is the statue, wearing the boy's locket and girt with the bordered toga, set up on the Capitol by decree of the senate: for the senate thought it unjust that he should be deemed not yet ripe for honour who was already ripe for virtue. Lepidus therefore outran the maturity of his years by the swiftness of his brave deed, and carried back from the battle a twofold praise, when his years scarcely allowed him to be even a spectator of it: for hostile arms, drawn swords, the flying of weapons, the din of approaching cavalry, and the onset of clashing armies strike no small terror even into young men; yet amid these the boyhood of the Aemilian house had the strength to earn a crown and to seize spoils.

1.2. This spirit was not lacking even to the boyhood of Marcus Cato: for when he was being brought up in the house of his uncle Marcus Drusus, and the Latins had come to him as tribune of the plebs to obtain the citizenship, and he was asked by Quintus Poppedius, the leader of Latium and a guest of Drusus, to help the allies before his uncle, with a steadfast countenance he answered that he would not do it. Then, interrupted again and again, he persisted in his resolve. Thereupon Poppedius lifted him to a high part of the house and threatened to throw him down from there unless he yielded to his entreaties: but not even by this could he be moved from his purpose. And so this saying was wrung from the man: 'Let us congratulate ourselves, Latins and allies, that he is so small; for with him as a senator we could not even have hoped for the citizenship.' Thus with a tender spirit Cato grasped the gravity of the whole senate-house, and by his perseverance repulsed the Latins, who were eager to lay hold of the rights of our citizenship. The same Cato, when he had come in his boy's toga to pay his respects to Sulla, and had seen the heads of the proscribed brought into the hall, moved by the atrocity of the thing, asked his tutor, named Sarpedon, why no one could be found to kill so cruel a tyrant: and when the tutor answered that it was not the will but the means that men lacked, since his safety was guarded by a great escort of soldiers, the boy begged him to give him a sword, declaring that he would very easily kill him, since he was accustomed to sit upon Sulla's couch. The tutor both recognized Cato's spirit and shuddered at his design, and ever afterwards always brought him to Sulla searched for weapons. Nothing is more admirable than this: a boy, in the very workshop of cruelty, did not fear the victor who was at that very time butchering consuls, towns, legions, and the greater part of the equestrian order. Had you set Marius himself in that place, he would have thought more swiftly of his own flight than of Sulla's death.

1.3. Gaius Cassius struck with his fist Sulla's son Faustus, his schoolmate, who was praising his father's proscription in the school and threatening that he himself, when his age allowed, would do the same. A hand worthy not to defile itself with public parricide!

1e.1. And, to take something also from the Greeks: that famous Alcibiades—whether his virtues or his vices were the more ruinous to his country I cannot tell, for by the former he deceived his fellow-citizens, by the latter he crushed them—when as a boy he had come to his uncle Pericles and had seen him sitting alone and sad, asked why he wore such confusion on his face. And when Pericles said that by command of the state he had built the Propylaea of Minerva, which are the gates of the citadel, and that, having spent an enormous sum of money on that work, he could not find how to render account of his administration, and was therefore troubled, the boy said: 'Then look rather for a way not to render account.' And so a man most eminent and most prudent, failing in his own counsel, made use of a boy's, and brought it about that the Athenians, entangled in a war with their neighbours, should have no leisure for demanding accounts. But let Athens see for itself whether to lament or to glory in Alcibiades, since to this day it wavers in doubtful judgement of mind between execration and admiration of the man.

2.pr. ON COURAGE. Now that we have disclosed the beginnings and first advances of virtue, we shall pursue the deed itself, whose most weighty force and most effective sinews consist in courage. Nor does it escape me, Romulus, founder of our city, that in this kind of praise the first place ought to be assigned to you. But suffer yourself, I beseech you, to be outrun by a single example, to which you yourself also owe some honour, since by his benefit it came about that so glorious a work of yours, Rome, did not fall to ruin.

2.1. When the Etruscans were bursting into the city across the Sublician bridge, Horatius Cocles seized its farther end and, with tireless fight, held back the whole column of the enemy until the bridge could be broken down behind his back; and when he saw his country freed from the threatening danger, he cast himself, armed, into the Tiber. The immortal gods, admiring his courage, granted him to come through unharmed: for, neither dashed by the height of the fall, nor weighed down by the burden of his arms, nor driven about by any whirling eddy, nor even wounded by the weapons that were hurled from every side, he had a safe issue of his swimming. Thus one man turned upon himself the eyes of so many citizens and so many enemies—the citizens dumbstruck with admiration, the enemy hesitating between joy and fear—and one man drew apart two armies locked in the fiercest fight, repelling the one, defending the other. In short, one man brought as much protection to our city by his shield as the Tiber brought by its bed. Wherefore the Etruscans, as they departed, could say: 'We conquered the Romans, but were conquered by Horatius.'

2.2. Cloelia makes me forgetful of my plan, having dared an exploit almost at the same time, and certainly against the same enemy and in the same Tiber: for, given among the other maidens as a hostage to Porsenna, by night she passed the enemy's guard, mounted a horse, and by a swift crossing of the river freed herself not only from the siege but her country also from fear, a girl bearing before men the lamp of courage.

2.3. I return now to Romulus, who, when challenged to single combat by Acron, king of the Caeninenses—although he believed himself superior both in number and in courage of soldiers, and it would have been safer to go down into battle with his whole army than alone—chose by preference to seize the omen of victory with his own right hand. Nor did fortune fail his undertaking: for, Acron being slain and the enemy routed, he carried off the spoils won from him to Jupiter Feretrius. So much for this; for valour consecrated by public religion needs no private praise.

2.4. Next after Romulus, Cornelius Cossus consecrated spoils to the same god, when, as master of the horse, he had met the leader of the Fidenates in battle and slain him. Great was Romulus as the beginner of this kind of inaugurated glory; but much also was gained by Cossus, in that he had the strength to imitate Romulus.

2.5. Nor ought we to separate from these examples the memory of Marcus Marcellus, in whom there was such vigour of spirit that, at the Po, with a few horsemen he attacked the king of the Gauls, surrounded by a vast army; and having at once cut him down, he stripped him of his arms and dedicated them to Jupiter Feretrius.

2.6. The same kind both of valour and of combat was used by Titus Manlius Torquatus, Valerius Corvinus, and Scipio Aemilianus. These too slew the enemy's leaders, who had even challenged them; but because they had done the deed under another's auspices, they did not lay up the spoils to be consecrated to Jupiter Feretrius. The same Scipio Aemilianus, when he was serving in Spain under the command of Lucullus and the powerful town of Intercatia was being besieged, was the first to scale its walls. And there was no one in that army who, whether by nobility, or by natural disposition of spirit, or by future deeds, deserved more that his safety should be spared and considered. But in those days each of the noblest young men bore the most toil and danger for the enlargement and protection of his country, thinking it disgraceful to himself to be surpassed in valour by those whom he excelled in rank. And therefore Aemilianus demanded for himself this service of war, which others were avoiding on account of its difficulty.

2.7. Antiquity offers a great example of courage amid these things. The Romans, driven back by the army of the Gauls, when they were betaking themselves to the Capitol and the citadel, and all could not lodge upon these hills, took the necessary decision of leaving the aged men behind in the level part of the city, so that the youth might the more easily guard the remnants of the empire. But not even at that time, so wretched and so mournful, did our city forget its valour: for the men who had held the highest offices, with doors flung open, seated themselves in their curule chairs with the insignia of the magistracies they had held and of the priesthoods they had obtained, so that they themselves might in their downfall retain the splendour and ornaments of their past life, and might give to the people an example for bearing their misfortunes more bravely . . . The sight of them was at first venerable to the enemy, who were moved both by the novelty of the thing and by the magnificence of their dress and by the very kind of their boldness. But who would doubt that the Gauls and victors would soon turn that admiration into laughter and into every kind of insult? Marcus Atilius therefore did not wait for this ripening of the affront, but struck with his staff a violent blow on the head of a Gaul who was stroking his beard, and to him, who in his pain rushed to kill him, he the more eagerly offered his body. Thus valour knows not how to be taken captive, is ignorant of the disgrace of submission, holds it sadder than any fate to yield to fortune, and devises new and splendid kinds of death—if indeed anyone perishes who is extinguished in such a way.

2.8. There must now be rendered to the Roman youth the title of glory that is their due, which, when Gaius Sempronius Atratinus as consul was fighting with too little success against the Volsci at Verrugo, that our line, already wavering, might not be driven back, dismounted from their horses, formed itself into companies, and burst into the army of the enemy. When these were dislodged, the youth seized the nearest hillock and brought it about that the whole onset of the Volsci, turned upon themselves, gave to our legions a saving respite for the strengthening of their spirits. And so, when the enemy were already thinking of setting up trophies, the battle being broken off by nightfall, they departed uncertain whether they retired as victors or as vanquished.

2.9. That strenuous man too was the flower of the equestrian order, by whose wondrous valour Fabius Maximus Rullianus, master of the horse in the war that was being waged against the Samnites, was cleared of the charge of having joined battle ill: for, when Papirius Cursor was setting out for the city to take the auspices afresh and Fabius had been set over the camp and forbidden to lead the army into the line, he nevertheless joined hands with the enemy, but as unluckily as rashly; for beyond doubt he was being overcome. But that young man of excellent disposition, the bridles of the horses stripped off, drove them, fiercely spurred, against the Samnites facing him, and by the stubborn presence of his spirit restored to his country the victory wrested from the enemy's hands and, with it, the hope of a great citizen.

2.10. Of what strength then were those soldiers who, with the violent stroke of their oars driving the Punic fleet to flight, swimming over the slippery surface of the sea as though over the firmness of plains, dragged it back to shore on foot?

2.11. Of the same time and renown was that soldier who, at the battle of Cannae—where Hannibal crushed the strength of the Romans more than he broke their spirit—when he had hands useless from wounds for holding his arms, embraced the neck of a Numidian who was trying to despoil him and, gnawing away his nose and ears, made it hideous, and breathed his last amid bites full of vengeance. Set aside the unjust issue of the fight: how much braver was the slain than the slayer! For the Carthaginian, even in victory, became a comfort to a dying man, while the Roman, at the very end of life, became the avenger of himself.

2.12. So remarkable in adversity is this manly spirit of a common soldier; that of a commander I am now about to relate: for Publius Crassus, waging war in Asia against Aristonicus, was caught between Elaea and Smyrna by the Thracians, of whom he kept a great number in his guard; and, that he might not come into Aristonicus' power, he escaped disgrace by a chosen manner of death: for the rod, which he had used for guiding his horse, he drove into the eye of one of the barbarians. He, inflamed by the force of pain, pierced Crassus' side with a dagger; and while he avenged himself, he freed the Roman commander from the shame of lost majesty. Crassus showed Fortune how unworthy a man she had wished to afflict with so grievous an insult, since he prudently and bravely broke the wretched snares she had cast upon his liberty, and restored himself, when he had been already granted to Aristonicus, to his own dignity.

2.13. The same purpose of mind was used by Scipio Metellus: for, having unsuccessfully defended in Africa the party of Gnaeus Pompey, his father-in-law, and making for Spain by sea, when he perceived that the ship in which he was carried had been captured by the enemy, he ran his sword through his breast; and then, fallen prostrate on the stern, when the Caesarian soldiers asked where the commander was, he answered, 'The commander is well,' and had strength to utter only so much as was enough to attest the fortitude of his spirit for everlasting praise.

2.14. Of your most glorious end too, Cato, Utica is the monument, in which from your bravest wounds more glory than blood flowed forth: since, by most steadfastly falling upon your sword, you gave to mankind a great lesson how much more to be preferred is dignity without life to the wise than life without dignity.

2.15. His daughter was of no womanish spirit. For when she had learned, on that night which was followed by the day of the foulest deed, of the plan which her husband Brutus had formed for killing Caesar, after Brutus had gone out of the bedroom she asked for a barber's knife as though to cut her nails, and, letting it fall as if by chance, wounded herself. Then, recalled to the bedroom by the cries of her maidservants, Brutus began to chide her for having forestalled the barber's office. But Porcia said to him privately: 'This deed of mine is not rash, but in such a state of ours it is the surest proof of my love towards you: for I wished to try, if your plan should turn out less than you wished, with how calm a spirit I should kill myself with the sword.'

2.16. More fortunate in his offspring was the elder Cato, from whom the beginnings of the Porcian family flowed. When in battle he was being fiercely attacked by an enemy . . . his sword slipped from its sheath and fell. When he noticed that it was lost, lying beneath a throng of fighters and surrounded on every side by the feet of the enemy, with such steadfast spirit he brought it back into his power that he seemed not to snatch it up under the pressure of danger, but to take it up free from fear. Astonished at this sight, the enemy came to him the next day as suppliants, seeking peace.

2.17. The courage of the toga too must be inserted among military deeds, since it earns the same praise whether displayed in the forum or in the camp. When Tiberius Gracchus, in his tribunate, having seized the favour of the people by most lavish largesses, held the commonwealth oppressed, and openly kept declaring that, the senate being destroyed, everything ought to be done through the plebs, the conscript fathers, called together into the temple of Public Faith, were deliberating with the consul Mucius Scaevola what should be done in such a storm; and when all were of the opinion that the consul should defend the commonwealth by arms, Scaevola denied that he would do anything by force. Then Scipio Nasica said: 'Since the consul, while he follows the order of law, is bringing it about that the Roman empire shall fall together with all its laws, I myself as a private citizen offer myself as a leader to your will.' And then, wrapping his left hand in the lowest part of his toga and raising his right, he cried aloud: 'Let those who wish the commonwealth to be safe follow me.' And by that voice, the hesitation of good citizens being shaken off, he compelled Gracchus, with his wicked faction, to pay the penalties he deserved.

2.18. Likewise, when the tribune of the plebs Saturninus and the praetor Glaucia and Equitius the tribune-elect of the plebs had stirred up the greatest commotions of sedition in our city, and no one set himself against the aroused people, first Marcus Aemilius Scaurus exhorted Gaius Marius, then holding his sixth consulship, to defend liberty and the laws by force, and at once ordered arms to be brought to himself. When these were brought, he clad his body, worn out with extreme old age and almost dissolved, and, leaning upon a spear, took his stand before the doors of the senate-house, and with the last small remnants of his breath brought it about that the commonwealth did not perish: for the presence of his spirit impelled the senate and the equestrian order to exact vengeance.

2.19. But, as we have just shown the bright glory of arms and of the toga, so let us now also display the bright glory of the stars, the divine Julius, the surest likeness of true valour. When he saw his line giving way before the countless multitude and fierce onset of the Nervii, he snatched a shield from a soldier who was fighting too timidly, and, covered by it, began to fight most fiercely. By this deed he spread courage through the whole army and by the divine ardour of his spirit restored the tottering fortune of war. The same man, in another battle, seized by the throat the standard-bearer of the Martian legion, who had already turned to take flight, and dragged him in the opposite direction, and, stretching his right hand towards the enemy, said: 'Where are you going? There are the men with whom we fight.' And with his hands indeed he set right a single soldier, but by exhortation so keen the panic of all the legions, and taught them, who were ready to be conquered, to conquer.

2.20. But, to follow out the deed of human valour: when Hannibal was besieging Capua, in which there was a Roman army, Vibius Accaus, prefect of a Paelignian cohort, threw the standard across the Punic rampart, cursing himself and his comrades-in-arms if the enemy should gain possession of the standard, and was the first to make the charge to recover it, the cohort following behind. When Valerius Flaccus, tribune of the third legion, saw this, turning to his men he said: 'We have come hither, as I see, as spectators of another's valour; but far be that disgrace from our blood, that we Romans should be willing to yield in glory to Latins. I at least, choosing either a glorious death or a happy issue of my boldness, am ready to charge forward even alone.' When these words were heard, the centurion Pedanius, holding in his right hand the standard he had torn loose, said: 'This shall presently be within the enemy's rampart with me: therefore let those follow who do not wish it to be taken,' and with him he burst into the camp of the Carthaginians and drew the whole legion along with him. Thus the brave rashness of three men did not allow Hannibal, a little before in his own hope master of Capua, to be master even of his own camp.

2.21. To their valour Quintus Occius yields in nothing, who on account of his courage was surnamed Achilles: for, not to recount his other exploits, yet abundantly from two deeds, which I am about to relate, will it be known how great a warrior he was. Having gone to Spain as lieutenant to the consul Quintus Metellus and waging the Celtiberian war under him, when he learned that he was challenged to single combat by a young man of that nation—and it happened that a table was set for him for the sake of lunching—he left it and secretly ordered his arms to be carried outside the rampart and his horse to be led out, that he might not be hindered by Metellus, and, pursuing that Celtiberian who was riding around most insolently, he slew him, and, stripping off the spoils from his body, carried them back into camp exulting with joy. The same man compelled Pyrresus, who excelled all the Celtiberians in nobility and valour, to yield to him, when he had been called out by him to a contest of combat. Nor did the young man of most ardent breast blush to hand over to him his sword and his cloak in the sight of both armies. Indeed he even asked that they should be joined to each other by the bond of hospitality, when peace should be restored between the Romans and the Celtiberians.

2.22. Nor can we pass over Acilius, who, when as a soldier of the tenth legion he fought a sea-battle for the party of Gaius Caesar, his right hand having been cut off, which he had flung upon a ship of the Massilians, seized the stern with his left, nor ceased to fight before he had captured it and sunk it in the deep. This deed lies before us with too little fitting renown. Yet the Athenian Cynaegirus, who used a like persistence in pursuing the enemy, wordy Greece, in the song of its own praises, has driven into the memory of all ages by the heralding of literature.

2.23. The naval glory of Acilius was followed, with terrestrial praise, by Marcus Caesius Scaeva, a centurion of the same commander: for, when he was fighting in defence of the fort over which he was set, and Iustuleius, prefect of Gnaeus Pompey, was striving with the utmost zeal and a great number of soldiers to capture him, he slew all who had come nearer, and, fighting without any backward step, fell over the huge heap which he himself had made. When his head, shoulder, and thigh were wounded, his eye torn out, his shield was seen pierced with a hundred and twenty blows. Such was the discipline in the camp of the divine Julius that nourished soldiers of whom the one, his right hand lost, the other, his eye lost, clung to the enemy—the one a victor after this loss, the other not vanquished even by this loss. But your unconquerable spirit, Scaeva, in which part of the realm of nature I should pursue with admiration I know not, since by your surpassing valour you have left it doubtful whether you displayed the braver fight among the waves or sent forth the braver voice on land: for in that war, in which Gaius Caesar, not content to enclose his own work within the shores of Ocean, laid heavenly hands upon the island of Britain, when you had been carried on a raft with four comrades to a rock near the island, which vast forces of the enemy held, after the tide by its ebbing had easily reduced to a ford for crossing the space by which the rock and the island were divided, and a vast multitude of barbarians was flowing up, while the rest withdrew on the raft to the shore, you alone, keeping your post unmoved, with weapons rushing upon you from every side and the enemy from every quarter striving with keen zeal to attack you, drove against the enemy's bodies with one right hand javelins enough for the day's battle of five soldiers. At the last, your sword drawn, beating off each boldest man now by the thrust of your boss, now by the stroke of your point, you were, to Roman eyes on this side, to British eyes on that, a spectacle incredible, had you not been seen. Then, after anger and shame compelled you, wearied, to attempt everything, your thigh pierced by a dart and your face bruised by the weight of a stone, your helmet now shattered by blows and your shield consumed by many holes, you trusted yourself to the deep and, laden with two coats of mail, swam out among the waves which you had stained with the enemy's blood; and when you had seen your commander, your arms not lost but well expended, though you deserved praise, you sought pardon for having returned without your shield—great in battle, but greater in your memory of military discipline. And so by the best appraiser of valour both your deeds and also your words were honoured with the rank of centurion.

2.24. But as concerns the surpassing courage of fighters, the mention of Lucius Siccius Dentatus may fitly close all Roman examples, whose deeds and the honours of his deeds might be judged to exceed the bounds of truth beyond belief, had not sure authorities, among whom Marcus Varro, willed them to be attested in their records. They report that he went down into the battle-line a hundred and twenty times, using such strength of spirit and body that he seemed always to have drawn to himself the greater part of the victory: that he carried off thirty-six spoils from the enemy, among whose number eight were those of men with whom, in the sight of both armies, he had fought upon challenge; that he rescued from the midst of death and saved fourteen citizens; that he received forty-five wounds in his breast, his back free of scars; that he followed nine triumphal chariots of commanders, turning the eyes of the whole city upon himself by the numerous procession of his gifts: for there were borne before him eight golden crowns, fourteen civic crowns, three mural crowns, one siege crown, eighty-three necklaces, a hundred and sixty bracelets, eighteen spears, twenty-five medallions—rewards enough even for a legion, let alone a single soldier.

2e.1. That blood too, from many bodies into one, was mingled with great wonder at Cales. When in that town Fulvius Flaccus was avenging the Campanian treachery by inflicting capital punishment upon the chief men of the state before his tribunal, and, on receiving a letter from the senate, was being compelled to set an end to their punishment, Titus Iubellius Taurea, a Campanian, of his own accord offered himself to him and said in as clear a voice as he could: 'Since, Fulvius, you are held by so great a desire of drinking our blood, why do you delay to draw the bloody axe upon me, that you may be able to boast that a man somewhat braver than yourself has been slain at your command?' Then, when Fulvius declared that he would gladly have done it, were he not hindered by the will of the senate, Taurea said: 'But look upon me, to whom the conscript fathers have prescribed nothing, performing a deed pleasing indeed to your eyes, but greater to your spirit,' and at once, having killed his wife and children, he fell upon his sword. What a man must we think him to have been, who by the slaughter of his own and of himself wished to attest that he chose to brand Fulvius' cruelty rather than to use the senate's mercy?

2e.2. Come, how great was the ardour of Darius' spirit! who, when he was freeing the Persians from the foul and cruel tyranny of the Magi, and was pressing one of them, thrown down in an obscure place, with the weight of his body, to his partner in the glorious deed, who hesitated to strike a blow at the Magus, lest in aiming at him he should wound Darius himself, said: 'You have no reason to use your sword more timidly out of regard for me: you may drive it through both of us, provided this man perishes as quickly as possible.'

2e.3. Here Leonidas, the noble Spartan, comes to mind, than whose purpose, deed, and end nothing is braver: for with three hundred citizens, set against all Asia at Thermopylae, he reduced to the utmost despair that grievous Xerxes, terrible both to sea and to land, who, not content to be terrible to men, threatened fetters even to Neptune and darkness to heaven, by the stubbornness of his valour. But, despoiled by the treachery and crime of the inhabitants of that region of the advantage of the place, by which he was most aided, he chose to die fighting rather than to desert the post assigned him by his country; and with so eager a spirit he exhorted his men to that battle, in which they were to perish, that he said: 'So breakfast, comrades, as men who are to dine among the dead.' Death had been proclaimed: the Lacedaemonians, just as though victory had been promised, obeyed the command undismayed.

2e.4. The fight and equally the death of Othryades, glorious . . . is seen wider in the praise of Thyrea than in the ground itself by its extent. He, with letters written in his own blood, carried back the victory wrested from the enemy almost after his own death into the bosom of his country with the bloody inscription of a trophy.

2e.5. A pitiable fall follows the most excellent harvests of Spartan valour. Epaminondas, the greatest good fortune of Thebes and likewise the first disaster of Lacedaemon, when by successful battles at Leuctra and Mantinea he had crushed the ancient glory of that city and its public valour, unconquered to that time, pierced by a spear, failing in blood and breath, asked those who tried to revive him first whether his shield was safe, then whether the enemy had been utterly routed. When he had learned these things to the satisfaction of his mind, he said: 'It is not the end, comrades, of my life, but a better and . . . beginning has come: for now your Epaminondas is born, because he dies thus. I see Thebes made the head of Greece by my leadership and auspices, and the brave and high-spirited city of Sparta lies cast down by our arms: Greece is freed from bitter domination. Childless too, yet not without children I die, since I leave behind two wondrous daughters, Leuctra and Mantinea.' He then ordered the spear to be drawn from his body and expired with that countenance with which, had the immortal gods suffered him to enjoy his victories, he would have entered his country's walls unhurt.

2e.6. Nor was there small steadfastness of mind even in Theramenes the Athenian, compelled to die in public custody, in which, by command of the Thirty Tyrants, he drank without hesitation the cup of poison held out to him, and what was left of it he jokingly dashed to the ground, forcing it to give a clear sound, and, smiling at the public slave who had handed it to him, said: 'I drink to Critias' health: see then that you carry this cup straightway to him.' Now this was the cruellest of the Thirty Tyrants. Truly it is to free oneself from punishment, to endure punishment so easily. And so Theramenes, dying just as though upon his own couch at home, departed from life, punished by his enemies' judgement, ended by his own.

2e.7. But Theramenes drew his manliness from letters and learning, whereas to Rhoetogenes the Numantine the ferocity of his own nation, as it were a mistress, stood forth to make him grasp a like valour: for, when the affairs of the Numantines were ruined and broken, since he surpassed all his fellow-citizens in nobility, wealth, and honours, he set fire to his own quarter, the fairest in that city, having gathered kindling from every side, and at once placed a drawn sword in the midst and ordered men to fight against one another in pairs, so that the vanquished, his neck cut, should be thrown upon the burning roofs. When by so brave a law of death he had destroyed them all, at the last he plunged himself into the flames.

2e.8. But, to relate the destruction of a city equally hostile to the Roman people, when Carthage was taken, the wife of Hasdrubal, reproaching him with impiety because he had been content to obtain life for himself alone from Scipio, dragging their common children, who did not refuse death, with her right and left hand, cast herself into the conflagration of her burning country.

2e.9. To this example of a woman's courage I shall add the equally brave fate of two girls. When, by the destructive sedition of Syracuse, the whole stock of King Gelon was drained away by most evident disasters and reduced to a single daughter, the maiden Harmonia, and attacks were made upon her in rivalry by her enemies, her nurse exposed to the hostile swords a girl of like age, adorned in royal dress; and she, that she might not be slaughtered even by the sword, proclaimed of what condition she was. Harmonia, marvelling at her spirit, could not endure to survive so great a loyalty, and, recalling the slayers and declaring who she was, turned them to her own slaughter. Thus to the one a hidden falsehood, to the other the open truth, was the end of life.

3.pr. ON ENDURANCE. By the distinguished deeds of men and women alike, courage has presented itself to the eyes of mankind, and has urged endurance to come forth into the midst—endurance established, to be sure, on no weaker roots, nor less abounding in noble spirit, but so joined to courage by likeness that it may seem to be either with it or born of it.

3.1. For what is more in keeping with the deeds I have related above than the deed of Mucius? When he bore it ill that our city was being pressed by Porsenna, king of the Etruscans, in a grievous and long war, he secretly entered his camp girt with a sword and tried to kill him as he was sacrificing before the altars. But, overpowered in the very effort of his purpose, at once dutiful and brave, he neither concealed the cause of his coming nor . . . showed with wondrous endurance how greatly he despised tortures: for, hating, I believe, his right hand, because it had not been able to serve him in the slaying of the king, he suffered it, thrust into the fire, to be burned. Surely the immortal gods looked upon no worship brought to their altars with more attentive eyes. Porsenna himself, too, forgetful of his own danger, he compelled to turn his vengeance into admiration: for he said: 'Return to your own, Mucius, and tell them that, when you sought my life, your own life was granted you by me.' Not flattering this clemency, Mucius, sadder at Porsenna's safety than gladder at his own, restored himself to his city with the surname of Scaevola for everlasting glory.

3.2. The valour of Pompeius too is worthy of praise, who, while he was discharging the office of an embassy, was intercepted by King Gentius, and when ordered to betray the counsels of the senate, offered his finger, applied to a burning lamp, to be consumed, and by that endurance at once struck the king with despair of learning anything from him by tortures, and bred in him a great desire of seeking the friendship of the Roman people. And, that I may not be compelled, by searching out more examples of this kind at home, too often to proceed to the abominable memory of civil wars, content with two Roman examples, which, while they contain the commendation of most illustrious families, yet contain no public grief, I shall subjoin foreign ones.

3e.1. By the ancient custom of Macedonia, boys of the noblest birth were at hand to King Alexander as he sacrificed. One of these, having seized a censer, stood before him. Upon his arm a burning coal fell. Although he was so burned by it that the smell of his scorched body reached the nostrils of the bystanders, yet he both suppressed his pain in silence and held his arm motionless, lest by shaking the censer he should hinder Alexander's sacrifice, or by uttering a groan should mar it with ill omen. The king, the more delighted by the boy's endurance, wished to take the surer proof of his perseverance: for he sacrificed on purpose the longer, nor by this did he repel him from his resolve. Had Darius fixed his eyes upon this marvel, he would have known that the soldiers of that race could not be conquered, when he had observed their tender age endowed with so great strength. There is also that vehement and steadfast warfare of the spirit, powerful in letters, the priestess of the venerable mysteries of learning—philosophy. When she is received into the breast, every base and useless passion being driven away, she strengthens it wholly with the bulwark of solid virtue, and makes it more powerful than fear and than pain.

3e.2. I shall begin with Zeno of Elea. He, being of the greatest prudence in examining the nature of things and most ready in rousing the spirits of young men to vigour, published the faith of his teachings by the example of his own valour: for, having left his country, in which he could enjoy secure liberty, he sought Agrigentum, overwhelmed by a wretched servitude, relying with such confidence on his own genius and character that he hoped that even from a tyrant, and from Phalaris, the savagery of a maddened mind could be torn away by him. When afterwards he perceived that with him the habit of domination prevailed more than the wholesomeness of counsel, he inflamed the noblest young men of that state with the desire of freeing their country. When an information of this matter had leaked out to the tyrant, calling the people together into the forum he began to torture him with various kinds of torment, asking again and again whom he had as partners in his plan. But Zeno neither named any of them, and rendered each man nearest and most faithful suspect to the tyrant, and, rebuking the Agrigentines for their cowardice and timidity, brought it about that, suddenly roused by an impulse of mind, they laid Phalaris low with stones. Thus the voice of one old man, set upon the rack—no suppliant voice, no wretched wailing, but a brave exhortation—changed the spirit and the fortune of a whole city.

3e.3. A philosopher of the same name, when he was being tortured by the tyrant Nearchus, against whose life he had entered into a plan, both for punishment and for the sake of disclosing his accomplices, conqueror of pain but desirous of vengeance, said that there was something which it would be very much to the tyrant's advantage to hear in private; and, the rack being loosened, when he perceived him exposed to his treachery, he seized his ear with a bite and did not let go before both he himself was deprived of life and the other of part of his body.

3e.4. An emulator of such endurance was Anaxarchus, who, when he was being tortured by Nicocreon, tyrant of the Cyprians, and could by no force be restrained from torturing the tyrant in turn with the lashes of most bitter revilings, at last, to him who threatened the cutting-off of his tongue, said: 'You will have no power, effeminate youth, over this part too of my body,' and at once spat the tongue, bitten off and chewed, into his face, open with rage. That tongue had held the ears of many, and chiefly of King Alexander, astonished with admiration of it, while it set forth most prudently and most eloquently the condition of the earth, the nature of the sea, the motions of the stars, and finally the nature of the whole world. Yet it almost perished more gloriously than it had flourished, because by so brave an end it confirmed the illustrious practice of its profession, and not only abandoned Anaxarchus' life but rendered his death more glorious.

3e.5. In Theodotus too, a man of the greatest weight, the tyrant Hieronymus wearied the hands of his torturers in vain: for Theodotus broke the lashes, slackened the cords, undid the rack, and put out the hot plates, before the tyrant could bring it about that he should disclose the accomplices of the tyrannicide. Nay more, by sullying with a false accusation the bodyguard, in whom the whole sum of the tyranny turned as if on a certain hinge, he tore from his side a faithful guardian, and by the benefit of his endurance not only concealed what was secret, but also avenged his own tortures. By them Hieronymus, while he eagerly mangled an enemy, rashly destroyed a friend.

3e.6. Among the Indians, indeed, the practice of endurance is believed to be so obstinately pursued that there are those who pass their whole life naked, now hardening their bodies in the icy chill of Mount Caucasus, now exposing them to flames without any groan. And by this no small glory is acquired through contempt of pain, and the title of wisdom is given.

3e.7. These things arose from deep and learned breasts; yet that which follows, no less admirable, a slavish spirit conceived. A barbarian slave, bearing grievously that Hasdrubal had killed his master, suddenly attacked and slew him; and when, having been seized, he was tortured in every way, he nevertheless kept on his face, most steadfastly, the joy which he had taken from his revenge. Not by a fastidious approach, then, is virtue won: she suffers lively spirits, once roused, to penetrate to her, nor offers a draught of herself either bountiful or grudging with any distinction of persons; but, set out equally for all, she weighs what desire rather than what dignity you have brought, and in the seizing of her goods she leaves to you yourself the weighing of the burden, so that as much as you have had the spirit to undergo, so much you carry away with you. Whence it comes about both that men born in a humble station rise to the highest dignity, and that the offspring of the noblest images, fallen back into some disgrace, turn the light received from their ancestors into darkness. These things will be made plainer by their own examples; and I shall begin first with those whose change for a better state offers a splendid material for the telling.

4.1. ON THOSE WHO, BORN IN A HUMBLE STATION, CAME FORTH ILLUSTRIOUS. A rustic hut received the cradle of Tullus Hostilius: his youth was occupied in pasturing cattle: his stronger age ruled and doubled the Roman empire: his old age, adorned with the most excellent . . . shone on the highest pinnacle of majesty.

4.2. But Tullus, though a great example of admirable increase, is nevertheless a domestic one: Tarquinius, on the other hand, Fortune carried into our city to seize the Roman empire—a foreigner, because . . . ; more foreign, because sprung from Corinth; to be scorned, because born of a merchant; to be blushed at, because born of a father who was even an exile. Yet so prosperous an issue of his condition he, by his own industry, rendered glorious instead of odious: for he extended the boundaries, increased the worship of the gods with new priesthoods, enlarged the number of the senate, left the equestrian order richer, and—what is the crown of his praises—by his glorious virtues brought it about that this city did not repent of having borrowed a king from its neighbours rather than chosen one from its own.

4.3. In Servius Tullius, however, Fortune especially showed her powers, by giving to this city a king born a homebred slave. To him indeed it fell to hold the empire the longest, to establish the census four times, to triumph three times. But from what point he set out and to what he came the inscription of his own statue abundantly attests, with its servile surname and royal title entwined.

4.4. By a wondrous step Varro too climbed to the consulship from his father's butcher's shop. And indeed Fortune thought it too little to bestow twelve fasces on a man reared by the takings of the basest merchandise, unless she had also given him Lucius Aemilius Paulus as colleague. And so he poured himself into Paulus' bosom that, when at Cannae by his own fault he had drained the strength of the Roman people, he allowed Paulus, who had been unwilling to join battle, to be slain, while he himself returned unhurt into the city. Nay more, he led out before the gates the senate, which was thanking him because he had been willing to return, and forced through the proposal that the dictatorship should be offered to the author of the most grievous disaster.

4.5. No small shame to the consulship is Marcus Perpenna, being a consul before he was a citizen; yet in the waging of war a somewhat more useful commander to the commonwealth than Varro: for he captured King Aristonicus and stood forth as the avenger of the Crassian slaughter; while meanwhile, after his life had triumphed, his death was condemned under the Papian law: for they compelled his father, who had grasped the rights of a Roman citizen as in no way belonging to him, to return, on the verdict of a Sabellian, into his former abode. Thus the name of Marcus Perpenna was a shadow, his consulship false, his command like a mist, his triumph a fleeting thing, an alien improperly sojourning in another's city.

4.6. But the rise of Marcus Porcius Cato was to be sought with public vows, who made his name, obscure at Tusculum, most noble at Rome: for by him were the monuments of Latin literature adorned, military discipline aided, the majesty of the senate increased, the family prolonged—in which the greatest glory was the later-born Cato.

4e.1. But, to join foreign things to Roman, Socrates, judged the wisest not only by the consent of men but also by the oracle of Apollo, born of his mother Phaenarete, a midwife, and his father Sophroniscus, a stonemason, attained to the brightest light of glory. And not without desert: for, when the talents of the most learned men wandered blindly in disputation and tried to explain the measures of the sun and moon and of the other stars by talkative rather than sure arguments, and even dared to embrace the constitution of the whole world, he was the first to draw his mind away from these unlearned errors and compel it to search out the inmost things of the human condition and the passions stored in the recesses of the breast—the best master of life, if virtue be valued for its own sake.

4e.2. What father Euripides, or what mother Demosthenes had, was unknown even to their own age. But that the mother of the one sold vegetables, and the father of the other little knives, the writings of almost all the learned declare. Yet what is brighter than the tragic power of the one or the oratorical power of the other?

5.pr. ON THOSE WHO DEGENERATED FROM ILLUSTRIOUS PARENTS. There follows the part of my twofold promise to be rendered, the images of illustrious men being veiled, since indeed those must be related who degenerated from their splendour—noble monstrosities steeped in the foulest filth of sloth and worthlessness.

5.1. For what is more like a monster than Scipio, son of the elder Africanus, who, born amid so great domestic glory, endured to be captured from earliest boyhood by the garrison of King Antiochus, when it would have been better for him to be cut off by a voluntary death than, between two most shining surnames, that of his father and that of his uncle—the one won when Africa was already overcome, the other just beginning to rise when Asia was for the greater part recovered—to hand over his hands to be bound by the enemy and by his benefit to obtain a precarious breath of life, concerning which Lucius Scipio was soon to set before the eyes of gods and men a most glorious triumph. The same man, a candidate for the praetorship, brought down into the Campus a white toga so soiled with stains of disgrace that, had he not been helped by the favour of Cicereius, who had been his father's clerk, he would not have seemed likely to obtain the honour from the people. And yet what difference did it make whether he carried home a repulse or a praetorship gained in such a manner? When his kinsmen perceived that this office was being defiled by him, they brought it about that he dared neither set up his chair nor pronounce judgement, and besides drew from his hand the ring on which the head of Africanus was carved. Good gods, what darkness you have suffered to be born from what lightning!

5.2. Come, the son of Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, a most illustrious citizen and commander, Quintus Fabius Maximus, what a life he led, ruined by luxury! Even if his other disgraces were to be blotted out, yet his character can abundantly be laid bare by that one shame, that Quintus Pompeius, the city praetor, interdicted him from his father's goods, nor in so great a city was anyone found to censure that decree: for men bore it with grief that money, which ought to serve the splendour of the Fabian house, should be squandered upon disgraces. And so him whom his father's excessive indulgence had left as heir, public severity disinherited.

5.3. Clodius Pulcher possessed the favour of the plebs, and the dagger, clinging to the gown of Fulvia, held its military glory subject to a woman's command. Their son Pulcher, besides that he led an enervated and chill youth, was also infamous for a lost love of a most common harlot, and was consumed by a manner of death to be blushed at: for, having greedily devoured . . . , he gave up the spirit of his foul and base intemperance.

5.4. For the grandson of Quintus Hortensius—who, amid the greatest harvest of talented and most eminent citizens, held the highest rank of authority and eloquence—Hortensius Corbio, led a life more abject and more obscene than that of any prostitute, and at the last his tongue prostituted itself among the brothels to the lust of all as much as his grandfather's had kept watch in the forum for the safety of the citizens.

6.pr. I perceive into how dangerous a path I have advanced. And so I shall call myself back, lest, if I persist in pursuing the remaining shipwrecks of the same kind, I be entangled in some unprofitable narrative. I shall therefore draw back my foot and suffer those deformed shadows to lie in the lowest abyss of their turpitude: for it is better to relate what illustrious men, in their dress and other manner of life, indulged themselves in by innovating in some part.

6.1. ON THOSE WHO, AMONG ILLUSTRIOUS MEN, INDULGED THEMSELVES IN DRESS OR OTHER ATTIRE MORE FREELY THAN THE CUSTOM OF THEIR FATHERS PERMITTED. Publius Scipio, when in Sicily, while increasing his army and seeking a fitting moment to cross into Africa, was turning over in his mind the ruin of Carthage, amid the counsels and undertakings of so great a matter gave attention to the gymnasium and used a Greek cloak and slippers. Nor for this did he set hands less vigorously upon the Punic armies, but perhaps the more eagerly, because lively and strenuous natures, the more rest they take, the more vehement onsets they put forth. I should even believe that he thought he would gain for himself the fuller favour of the allies, if he approved their manner of life and their solemn exercises. To these, however, he came when he had for a long time . . . wearied his shoulders and other limbs and had compelled himself to prove his strength by military exercise; and his toil consisted in the one, his relaxation from toil in the other.

6.2. But the statue of Lucius Scipio we behold on the Capitol clad in a chlamys and slippers. In which dress, evidently because he had once used it, he wished his likeness to be fashioned and set up.

6.3. Lucius Sulla too, when he was commander, did not think it disgraceful to walk about at Naples in a chlamys and slippers.

6.4. And Gaius Duellius, who first carried back a naval triumph over the Carthaginians, as often as he had feasted in public, was accustomed to return home from dinner by the light of a wax torch, with a flute-player and a lyre-player going before, attesting by a nightly celebration his notable success in war.

6.5. For Papirius Masso, indeed, when, having served the commonwealth well, he had not obtained a triumph from the senate, made on the Alban Mount the beginning of triumphing for himself, and afterwards furnished an example to others; and instead of a laurel crown, when he was present at some spectacle, he used one of myrtle.

6.6. Then there is the almost insolent deed of Gaius Marius: for after his Jugurthine and Cimbric and Teutonic triumph he always drank from a tankard, because Father Liber, when leading his triumph over the Indians from Asia, was reported to have used this kind of cup, so that amid the very drinking of the wine he might compare his own victories with Liber's victory.

6.7. But Marcus Cato as praetor conducted the trials of Marcus Scaurus and of the other defendants clad in no tunic, but covered only by his bordered toga.

7.pr. But these and things like these are tokens of a virtue claiming for itself some liberty in innovating upon custom: but in those things which I shall next subjoin, it will be known how great a confidence in itself virtue is wont to have.

7.1. ON SELF-CONFIDENCE. When Publius and Gnaeus Scipio with the greater part of their army had been overwhelmed by the Punic battle-line in Spain, and all the nations of that province had followed the friendship of the Carthaginians, and none of our commanders dared to set out thither to set the matter right, Publius Scipio, in his twenty-fourth year, promised that he would go. And by this confidence indeed he gave to the Roman people hope of safety and of victory.

7.1a. And he used the same confidence in Spain itself: for when he was besieging the town of Badia, he ordered those who approached his tribunal to enter into bonds, for the next day, in the temple which was within the enemy's walls; and at once, having taken the city, at the time and place which he had foretold, his chair being set, he pronounced judgement upon them. Nothing is nobler than this confidence, nothing truer than this prediction, nothing more effective than this swiftness, nothing even more worthy than this dignity.

7.1b. No less spirited or less prosperous was that crossing of his into Africa, into which he led his army from Sicily against the senate's prohibition; because, had he not in this matter trusted his own counsel more than that of the conscript fathers, the end of the Second Punic War would not have been found.

7.1c. Equal to this deed is that confidence, that, after he had reached Africa, the spies of Hannibal who had been caught in his camp and brought to him he neither punished nor questioned about the counsels and forces of the Carthaginians, but took care that they should be led most carefully around all the companies, and, having asked them whether they had sufficiently observed what they had been ordered to spy out, he gave them a meal and dismissed them unharmed, themselves and their beasts. By so confident a spirit he crushed the enemy's courage before their arms.

7.1d. But, to come to the deeds of his extraordinary confidence at home: when, by Lucius Scipio, an account of four million sesterces out of the money of Antiochus was demanded back in the senate-house, the book which had been produced by him, in which the sums received and expended were contained, and by which the accusation of his enemies could be refuted, he tore to pieces, indignant that doubt should be raised concerning a matter that had been administered under himself as lieutenant. Nay more, he spoke in this manner: 'I do not render to your treasury, conscript fathers, the account of four million sesterces, I who, as the minister of another's command, made it richer by two hundred million sesterces under my own leadership and auspices: for I do not think it has come to such a pitch of malignity that inquiry should be made into my innocence: for, when I subjected all Africa to your power, I carried back nothing from it that I might call my own, save the surname. Neither, then, did the Punic treasures make me, nor the Asiatic treasures make my brother, greedy; but each of us is richer in envy than in money.' This so steadfast defence the whole senate approved, as it did that deed of his, that, when there was need to draw money from the treasury for a necessary use of the commonwealth, and the quaestors, because the law seemed to stand in the way, did not dare to open it, he as a private citizen demanded the keys, and, the treasury opened, forced the law to yield to expediency. And this confidence was given him by that consciousness whereby he remembered that all the laws had been kept by himself.

7.1e. I shall not be wearied of relating again and again the deeds of the same man, since not even he was wearied of producing his virtues in a like kind. A day before the people had been appointed for him by Marcus Naevius, tribune of the plebs, or, as some record, by the two Petillii. Led down into the forum by a vast throng, he ascended the Rostra, and, placing on his head a triumphal crown, said: 'On this day, Quirites, I compelled Carthage, breathing great things, to accept our laws: it is therefore just that you should go with me to the Capitol to offer thanksgiving.' Then his most glorious utterance was followed by an equally glorious issue: since, making for the couches of Jupiter Best and Greatest, he had as his companion the whole senate, the entire equestrian order, and all the plebs. It remained for the tribune to plead before the people without a people, and, deserted in the forum, to linger alone, to the great mockery of his own false charge. To avoid which shame he went up to the Capitol and, from an accuser of Scipio, became one of his worshippers.

7.2. An excellent successor to his grandfather's spirit was Scipio Aemilianus, who, when he was besieging a very strong city, and some advised him to scatter iron caltrops around its walls and to strew all the fords with leaden plates having the points of nails, lest by a sudden sally the enemy might make an attack upon our garrisons, answered that it did not belong to the same man both to wish to capture some of them and to fear them.

7.3. To whatever part of memorable examples I turn, willing or unwilling, I must needs cling to the surname of the Scipios: for who, indeed, could in this place pass over Nasica, that most illustrious author of a saying of confident spirit? When the dearness of provisions was increasing, Gaius Curiatius, tribune of the plebs, having brought the consuls forward into the assembly, was urging them to lay before the senate the matter of buying corn and of sending envoys to settle that business. To interrupt this most unprofitable measure, Nasica began to set on foot a contrary action. Then, the plebs clamouring against him, he said: 'Be silent, I beg, Quirites: for I understand better than you what is expedient for the commonwealth.' On hearing this voice, all, in silence full of veneration, paid more regard to his authority than to their own sustenance.

7.4. The spirit of Livius Salinator too is to be handed down to everlasting memory. He, when he had destroyed Hasdrubal and the army of the Carthaginians in Umbria, and it was said to him that the Gauls and Ligures, scattered and straggling without leaders and standards from the battle-line, could be crushed with a small force, answered that in this they ought to be spared, lest the enemy should lack home-bred messengers of so great a disaster.

7.5. This excellence of spirit was in war; that which Publius Furius Philus the consul displayed in the senate was of the toga, but no less praiseworthy: for Quintus Metellus and Quintus Pompeius, men of consular rank, his bitter enemies, who again and again reproached him with his eager setting-out for the province of Spain, which he had drawn by lot, he compelled to go thither with him as his lieutenants: a confidence not only brave but almost rash, which dared to gird its own sides with two most bitter hatreds, and endured to seek the use of a service scarcely safe among friends from the bosom of enemies!

7.6. If this deed pleases anyone, the resolve of Lucius Crassus too, who among our ancestors was most illustrious for eloquence, must needs not displease him: for when, after his consulship, he held the province of Gaul, and Gaius Carbo, whose father he had condemned, came into it to spy out his acts, he not only did not remove him thence, but besides assigned him a place upon his tribunal, nor took cognizance of any matter unless Carbo were admitted to his counsel. And so the keen and vehement Carbo gained nothing else by his Gallic journey than to perceive that his guilty father had been sent into exile by a man of the utmost integrity.

7.7. The elder Cato, often summoned by his enemies to plead his cause, and never convicted of any crime, at the last reposed so much confidence in his own innocence that, when brought to public trial by them, he demanded as his judge Tiberius Gracchus, from whom in the administration of the commonwealth he greatly differed, even to much hatred. And by this very excellence of spirit he checked the obstinacy of those who pursued him.

7.8. The same was the fortune of Marcus Scaurus, equally long and robust old age, the same spirit. When he was accused before the Rostra of having received money from King Mithridates for betraying the commonwealth, he pleaded his cause thus: 'It is unfair, Quirites, that, having lived among some, I should render account of my life before others; but yet I shall dare to ask you, the greater part of whom could not be present at my honours and acts: Varius Severus of Sucro says that Aemilius Scaurus, corrupted by a royal bribe, betrayed the empire of the Roman people; Aemilius Scaurus denies that he is involved in this guilt: which of the two do you believe?' The people, moved by admiration of him, drove Varius from that most senseless prosecution with persistent clamour.

7.9. On the other hand, that eloquent Marcus Antonius—for it was not by rejecting but by embracing the pleading of his cause that he attested how innocent he was—as quaestor setting out for Asia, had already reached Brundisium, where, informed by letter that he had been charged with incest before the praetor Lucius Cassius, whose tribunal, on account of its excessive severity, was called the reef of defendants—though he might avoid it by the benefit of the Memmian law, which forbade the names of those who were absent on the commonwealth's business to be received—nevertheless hurried back into the city. By this counsel, so full of good confidence, he obtained both a swift acquittal and a more honourable departure.

7.10. There are also those glorious examples of public confidence: for when, in that war which was being waged against Pyrrhus, the Carthaginians had of their own accord sent a fleet of a hundred and thirty ships to Ostia in aid of the Romans, it pleased the senate that envoys should go to their commander to say that the Roman people was accustomed to undertake wars which it could wage with its own soldiers: therefore let them lead the fleet back to Carthage. The same people, some years later, when the strength of the Roman empire had been drained by the disaster of Cannae, dared to send a force into Spain as a reinforcement for the army, and so brought it about that the site of the enemy's camp—at the very moment when Hannibal was beating upon the Capene Gate with his arms—should not be sold for less than if the Carthaginians did not hold it. So to bear oneself in adversity—what else is it than to turn raging Fortune, conquered by shame, into an aid to oneself?

7.11. By a great space the transition is divided from the senate to the poet Accius. But, that we may pass from him more becomingly to foreign matters, let him be brought forward into the midst. He never rose to his feet for Julius Caesar, a most eminent and most flourishing man, when he came into the college of poets—not unmindful of his majesty, but because he was confident that in the comparison of common studies he was somewhat the superior. Wherefore he was free from the charge of insolence, because there were practised contests of volumes, not of images.

7e.1. Nor did Euripides at Athens seem arrogant when, the people demanding that he should remove a certain sentiment from a tragedy, he came forward onto the stage and said that he was accustomed to compose plays to teach the people, not to learn from them. Confidence is indeed to be praised, which weighs the estimate of itself with a sure weight, claiming for itself just so much as is enough to stand apart from contempt and from insolence. And so that too which he answered to the tragic poet Alcestis is to be approved. When, with him, he complained that in three days he could not, with the greatest labour expended, bring out more than three verses, and the other boasted that he had very easily written a hundred, Euripides said: 'But there is this difference, that yours will suffice only for three days, mine for all time': for the writings of the one, with his fertile course, fell to ruin within the first bounds of memory, while the work of the other, laboured out with a hesitating pen, will be borne through all the ages with the full sails of glory.

7e.2. I shall add an example from the same stage. Antigenidas, the flute-player, to a pupil of his who had made great progress but with too little success was winning the people's approval, said in the hearing of all: 'Play for me and for the Muses,' since indeed a perfected art, deserted by the allurements of fortune, is not stripped of its just confidence, and the praise which it knows it deserves, if it does not obtain it from others, it nevertheless carries away as received from its own judgement.

7e.3. Zeuxis, moreover, when he had painted Helen, did not think he should wait to hear what men would feel about that work, but at once added these verses: 'No blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for so long a time suffer woes for such a woman.' Did the painter arrogate so much to his own right hand that he believed he had grasped in it as much of beauty as either Leda could bring forth by a heavenly birth or Homer could express by his divine genius?

7e.4. Phidias too played upon Homer's verses with an excellent saying: for, when the statue of Olympian Jupiter was finished, than which no work of human craftsmanship is more eminent or more admirable, being asked by a friend whither directing his mind he had embraced in lines of ivory the countenance of Jupiter, all but fetched from heaven itself, he answered that he had used those verses as his master: 'He spoke, and with his dark brows the son of Cronos nodded; and the ambrosial locks of the lord flowed streaming from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus tremble.'

7e.5. The bravest commanders do not allow me to dwell any longer upon slighter examples. For Epaminondas, when his fellow-citizens, in anger, entrusted to him, by way of insult, the care of paving the streets in the town—for that service was among them the basest—accepted it without any hesitation and declared that he would take pains that in a short time it should be made most splendid. Then by his wondrous management he made the most abject business, instead of a most ample ornament, a thing to be sought after at Thebes.

7e.6. Hannibal, indeed, when he was in exile with King Prusias and was the author to him of joining battle, and the king said that the entrails did not portend the same to him, said: 'Do you really prefer to trust a little piece of calf's flesh rather than an old commander?' If you count the words, briefly and tersely; if you weigh the sense, copiously and forcibly: for he poured out before the man's feet the Spains snatched from the Roman people, and the strength of the Gauls and of Liguria reduced into his own power, and the ridges of the Alps laid open by a new passage, and Lake Trasimene branded with dire memory, and Cannae, the most glorious monument of a Punic victory, and Capua possessed, and Italy mangled; and he could not endure with a calm spirit that his own glory, attested by long experience, should be set after the liver of a single victim. And indeed, as far as concerned the exploring of the arts of war and the appraising of military leadership, the breast of Hannibal would have outweighed all the braziers and all the altars of Bithynia, with Mars himself as judge.

7e.7. That saying too of King Cotys was capable of a generous spirit: for when he learned that the citizenship had been given him by the Athenians, he said: 'And I will give them the right of my nation.' He made Thrace equal to Athens, lest, by judging himself unequal to the return of such a benefit, he should be thought to feel too humbly of his own origin.

7e.8. Nobly too spoke each of two Spartans: both he who, rebuked by someone for going down lame into battle, answered that his purpose was to fight, not to flee; and he who, when someone related that the sun was wont to be darkened by the arrows of the Persians, said: 'You bring good news: for we shall fight in the shade.' A man of the same city and spirit said to his guest, who was showing him the high and broad walls of his country: 'If you have made these for women, well; if for men, shamefully.'

8.pr. ON STEADFASTNESS. The open and spirited breast of good confidence being measured out, there remains, as a debt owed, the representation of steadfastness: for it is so ordained by nature that whosoever is confident that he has grasped something in due order and with a right mind, either defends it keenly, if it is already done and is assailed, or, if it is not yet brought forth and is interrupted, carries it through to its accomplishment without any hesitation.

8.1. But while I pursue examples of the proposed subject, as I look more widely about me, before all the steadfastness of Fulvius Flaccus presents itself. He had taken Capua by arms, which had been persuaded by the deceitful promises of Hannibal, by a wicked defection, to bargain for the sovereignty of Italy. Then, as just an appraiser of the enemy's guilt as he was a glorious victor, he resolved to destroy utterly the Campanian senate, the author of the impious decree. And so, loaded with chains, he divided it between two prisons, Teanum and Cales, intending to execute his plan when he had finished those things whose administration seemed of nearer necessity. But, a rumour having arisen of a milder sentence of the senate, lest the guilty should escape their due punishment, by night, putting his horse to the gallop, he hastened to Teanum, and, having killed those who were kept there, immediately crossed over to Cales to carry out the work of his perseverance; and, the enemy being already bound to the stake, he received a letter from the conscript fathers, in vain bringing safety to the Campanians: for he put it in his left hand, just as it had been handed to him, and, having ordered the lictor to proceed according to law, he then at last opened it, after it was no longer possible to obey it. By this steadfastness he surpassed even the glory of victory, because, if you appraise him, the praise being divided within itself, you would find him greater for having punished Capua than for having captured it.

8.2. And that steadfastness indeed was of severity; but admirable was that of piety which Quintus Fabius Maximus rendered untiring to his country. He had paid out money to Hannibal for the captives; being defrauded of it by the state, he kept silence: the senate had made Minucius, the master of the horse, equal to him, the dictator, in the authority of command; he held his peace: provoked besides by many injuries, he remained in the same disposition of spirit, nor ever allowed himself to be angry with the commonwealth for his own sake. So persevering was he in his love of the citizens. And what? In the waging of war was not his steadfastness equal? The Roman empire, almost destroyed by the battle of Cannae, seemed scarcely able to suffice for the raising of armies. And so, judging it better to baffle and elude the onsets of the Carthaginians than to join hands with them in full battle-line, though provoked by very many threats of Hannibal, and often even with the show of a successful action offered him, he never receded from the wholesomeness of his counsel, not even for the hazard of a small engagement; and—what is most difficult—he everywhere appeared superior to anger and to hope. Therefore, as Scipio by fighting, so this man by not fighting, seemed most of all to have succoured our city: for the one by his swiftness crushed Carthage, the other by his delay brought it about that Rome could not be crushed.

8.3. That Gaius Piso too bore himself wonderfully and steadfastly as consul in a turbulent state of the commonwealth will appear from the following narrative. The favour of the people, snatched away by the pestilent flatteries of Marcus Palicanus, a most seditious man, was attempting at the consular elections to commit the greatest disgrace, desiring to confer the most ample command upon a man to whose foulest deeds an exquisite punishment rather than any honour was owed. Nor was there lacking to the distracted multitude a furious tribunician torch, to accompany his rashness as it rushed on and to inflame it with its own actions when it flagged. In this state of the city, at once pitiable and to be blushed at, Piso, placed before the Rostra all but by the hands of the tribunes, when they had canvassed him on this side and on that, and he was asked whether he would declare Palicanus elected consul by the votes of the people, at first answered that he did not think the commonwealth was overspread with such darkness that it should come to this pitch of unworthiness. Then, when they persistently pressed him and said, 'Come, what if it does come to that?' he said: 'I will not declare him.' By this so decisive answer he snatched the consulship from Palicanus before he could obtain it. Many and terrible things Piso despised, while he would not have the glorious rigour of his mind bent.

8.4. But Metellus Numidicus, on account of a like kind of perseverance, also met with a storm unworthy of his majesty and character: for when he perceived whither the deadly attempts of Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, were tending, and into how great an evil for the commonwealth they would burst forth, if they were not met, he chose to go into exile rather than into his law. Can anyone be called more steadfast than this man, who, that he might not be driven from his opinion, endured to be deprived of his country, in which he held the highest grade of dignity?

8.5. But, while I should set no one before him, yet I should rightly compare with him Quintus Scaevola the augur. The factions of his enemies being scattered and laid low, Sulla, having seized the city, had assembled the senate under arms and was carried with the utmost eagerness to have Gaius Marius declared a public enemy as quickly as possible. When no one dared to go against his will, Scaevola alone, being asked his opinion on this matter, refused to give it. Nay more, to Sulla, who was pressing him more savagely, he said: 'Though you display the columns of soldiers with which you have surrounded the senate-house, though you threaten death again and again, yet you will never bring it about that, for the sake of my scanty and aged blood, I should judge Marius, by whom the city and Italy were saved, a public enemy.'

8.6. What has a woman to do with a public assembly? If the custom of our fathers be kept, nothing: but where domestic quiet is tossed by the waves of seditions, the authority of ancient usage is shaken, and that which violence compels avails more than what modesty advises and enjoins. And so you, Sempronia, sister of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, wife of Scipio Aemilianus, I shall pursue with honoured memory—not that I should comprehend you in a malicious narrative as one absurdly thrusting yourself in among the gravest works of men, but because, brought before the people by a tribune of the plebs in the greatest confusion, you in nothing degenerated from the greatness of your kindred. You were compelled to take your stand in that place where the brows of the chief men of the state were wont to be troubled; a most ample power, pouring forth threats with grim countenance, pressed upon you; the whole forum, ringing with the clamour of an unskilled multitude, strove with the keenest zeal that you should give a kiss to Equitius—for whom a false right to the Sempronian family was being sought—as to a son of your brother Tiberius. You, nevertheless, repulsed that monster, dragged forth I know not from what darkness, who with execrable boldness was stretching out to usurp another's kinship.

8.7. The lights of our city will not be indignant if, amid their surpassing splendour, the valour of centurions too has offered itself to be regarded: for, as humility ought to venerate eminence, so by the nobility the newness of good disposition is rather to be cherished than spurned. Or ought Titius to be driven from the connection of these examples? Who, keeping watch for the party of Caesar, intercepted by the garrison of Scipio, when safety was to be given him by him on one condition only, if he affirmed that he would be a soldier of Gnaeus Pompey, Scipio's own father-in-law, did not hesitate to answer thus: 'To you indeed, Scipio, I give thanks; but I have no need to use that condition of life.' A noble spirit, without any images of ancestors!

8.8. Maevius, a centurion of the divine Augustus, following the same resolve of steadfastness, when in the Antonian war he had again and again fought outstanding battles, surrounded by an unforeseen ambush of the enemy and brought to Antony at Alexandria, and asked what should be decided concerning him, said: 'Order me to be slain, since I can be induced neither by the benefit of safety nor by the punishment of death either to cease to be Caesar's soldier or to begin to be yours.' But the more steadfastly he despised his life, the more easily he obtained it: for Antony granted him his safety in tribute to his valour.

8e.1. Many Roman examples of this stamp survive, but excess is now to be avoided. And so I shall permit my pen to glide down now to foreign matters. Of these let Blassius hold the first place, than whose steadfastness nothing is more persistent: for, desiring to restore to the Romans his country Salapia, occupied by a Punic garrison, he dared to attempt—with greater desire than sure hope—to bring over to the same work Dasius, who differed from him with the keenest zeal in the administration of public affairs and was otherwise wholly given to the friendship of Hannibal, and without whom the planned design could not be carried out. Dasius at once reported his conversation to Hannibal, adding what seemed likely both to make himself more commended and his enemy more hated. By Hannibal they were ordered to attend, that the one might prove his charge and the other defend himself. But, while the matter was being conducted before the tribunal and all eyes were intent upon that inquiry, while by chance some other business of nearer concern was being handled, Blassius, with dissembling countenance and lowered voice, began to advise Dasius to favour the part of the Romans rather than of the Carthaginians. Thereupon indeed Dasius cried out that he was being solicited against Hannibal in the very sight of the commander. But, because it was thought incredible, and had penetrated to but one pair of ears, and was alleged by an enemy, it lacked the credit of truth. Yet not long after, the wondrous steadfastness of Blassius drew Dasius over to him, and he handed over to Marcellus both Salapia and the five hundred Numidians who were there for its guard.

8e.2. Phocion, indeed, when the Athenians had managed a matter prosperously otherwise than he had advised, stood forth so persevering a defender of his own opinion that in the assembly he said that he rejoiced indeed at their success, but that his own counsel had nevertheless been somewhat better: for he did not condemn what he had rightly seen, because what another had ill counselled had turned out well, judging the latter the more fortunate, the former the wiser. And indeed chance makes the mind fond of rashness, when it propitiously breathes upon a depraved counsel, and the more vehemently it harms, the more unexpectedly it profits. Placid and merciful and liberal, and tempered with every sweetness, were the manners of Phocion, which assuredly the agreement of all judged most fitly to be adorned with the surname of Goodness. And so the steadfastness, which by nature seems the more rigid, flowed gentle from his mild breast: but the spirit of Socrates, fortified by the strength of manliness, gave forth a somewhat harsher example of perseverance.

8e.3. The whole state of the Athenians, stirred up by a most unjust and savage frenzy, had passed a grim sentence concerning the lives of the ten praetors who at Arginusae had destroyed the Lacedaemonian fleet. By chance Socrates then held that office by whose decision the resolutions of the plebs were arranged; and, judging it unworthy that so many and so well-deserving men should be carried off by an unworthy cause through an onset of envy, he set his own steadfastness against the rashness of the multitude, and by the greatest uproar of the assembly and by the most furious threats was not compelled to enroll himself as the author of the public madness. And it, forbidden by his opposition to rage by the lawful path, persevered in defiling its hands with the unjust blood of the praetors. Nor did Socrates fear lest the eleventh frenzy of his distracted country should be his own death.

8e.4. The next example, though not of the same splendour, can yet be held an equally sure proof of steadfastness. At Athens, Ephialtes, a man of effective service in the forum and of no hidden good faith, was ordered to prosecute publicly, and was compelled to lay an information, among others, against the name of Demostratus, whose son was Demochares, a boy of surpassing beauty, clinging to him in a most ardent love of his spirit. And so, by the lot of his common duty a grim accuser, by the condition of his private affection a pitiable defendant, he could neither repel the boy, who came to entreat him to press the less hard upon his father's accusations, nor look upon him as a suppliant fallen at his knees, but, with covered head, weeping and groaning, suffered him to pour out his prayers, and nonetheless, with sincere good faith, condemned the accused Demostratus. A victory won with I know not whether the greater praise or the greater torment, since, before he crushed the guilty, Ephialtes conquered himself.

8e.5. Him the Syracusan Dio outweighs by the severity of his example. When some warned him to be more cautious against Heraclides and Callippus, in whose faith he placed the greatest trust, as men weaving snares for him, he answered that he preferred to depart from life rather than, through fear of a violent death, to set friends on a level with enemies.

8e.6. What follows is illustrious both by the wonder of the thing itself and by the renown of its author. Alexander, king of the Macedonians, the surpassing wealth of Darius having been already crushed in a famous battle, heated by the burning of the season and of his march, plunged his body in Cilicia into the Cydnus, which, conspicuous for the clearness of its water, flows through Tarsus. Then suddenly, from the excessive draught of cold, his sinews being stupefied and his limbs benumbed by torpor, with the utmost dismay of the whole army he was carried into a town near the camp. There he lay sick at Tarsus, and amid his adverse health the hope of impending victory wavered. And so the physicians, called together, were considering with most careful counsel the remedies of his safety. When they had directed their opinions to a single draught, and Philip the physician—who was indeed his friend and companion—had handed it, tempered by his own hands, to Alexander, there came a letter sent by Parmenio, warning the king to beware the treachery of Philip, as one corrupted by money from Darius. When he had read it, without any hesitation he drank the medicine and then handed the letter to Philip to read. For so steadfast a judgement towards his friend he received a most worthy reward from the immortal gods, who would not have the safeguard of his safety interrupted by a false information.