Book 5

1.pr. ON HUMANITY AND CLEMENCY What more fitting companions could I have given to generosity than humanity and clemency, since they seek the same kind of praise? Of these the first is bestowed in answer to poverty, the second in answer to pressing distress, the third in answer to the doubtful turns of fortune; and although you may not know which to approve most highly, yet the recommendation of that one seems to take precedence whose name has been derived from divinity itself.

1.1a. But before all else I shall set forth the most humane and clement acts of the senate. When envoys of the Carthaginians had come to the city to ransom captives, the senate at once, without accepting any money, gave back to them their young men, who made up a number of two thousand seven hundred and forty-three . . . so great an army of the enemy released, so great a sum of money scorned, pardon granted for so many Punic wrongs. I imagine that the envoys themselves were dumbfounded and said to one another: "O the munificence of the Roman race, to be matched with the kindness of the gods! O our embassy, fortunate beyond our prayers! For the favour we should never have granted, we have received."

1.1b. This too is no small mark of the senate's humanity: it decreed that Syphax, once the wealthiest king of Numidia, who had died a captive in custody at Tibur, should be carried out with a public funeral, so that it might add to the gift of his life the honour of burial.

1.1c. And it used a like clemency in the case of Perseus: for when he had died at Alba, to which he had been relegated for the sake of custody, it sent a quaestor to carry him out with a public funeral, so as not to allow the remains of a king to lie unhonoured.

1.1d. These offices were rendered to enemies, to the wretched, and to those whose fate was accomplished; the following were bestowed upon friends, the fortunate, and the living. When the Macedonian war was finished, Misagenes, the son of Masinissa, having been sent back by the commander Paulus to his father along with the cavalry whom he had brought up in support of the Romans, was carried, sick, to Brundisium when his fleet was scattered by a storm. As soon as the senate learned of this, it at once ordered a quaestor to go there, by whose care both lodging should be arranged for the young man and everything that his health required should be supplied, and expenses liberally furnished both to himself and to his whole retinue, and ships also looked to, in which he might cross over to Africa well and safely with his men. It ordered that each of the cavalry be given a pound of silver apiece and five hundred sesterces. So prompt and so refined a humanity of the senators could bring it about that, even if the young man had expired, his father would have borne his loss with a more even mind.

1.1e. The same senate, when it heard that Prusias, king of Bithynia, was coming to congratulate it on the defeat of Perseus, sent Publius Cornelius Scipio, a quaestor, to meet him at Capua, and decreed that the best possible house should be rented for him at Rome, and that provisions should be furnished at public expense not only to himself but also to his companions; and in receiving him the whole city wore the face of a single loving friend. And so he who had come most devoted to us returned to his own kingdom with his goodwill toward us doubled.

1.1f. Not even Egypt was without a share of Roman humanity. Its king Ptolemy, stripped of his kingdom by his younger brother, had come to Rome with very few slaves, covered in filth, in order to seek aid, and had taken himself to the lodging of an Alexandrian painter. After this was reported to the senate, it summoned the young man and offered as careful an apology as it could because it had neither sent a quaestor to meet him after the custom of the ancestors nor received him with public hospitality, and it said that this had happened not through its own negligence but through his own sudden and secret arrival; and it led him straight from the senate-house to the public residence and urged him, having laid aside his squalor, to ask for a day on which to approach the senate itself. It even took care that gifts should be given to him daily through the quaestor. By these steps of attentions it raised him, prostrate as he was, to the height of royalty, and brought it about that he placed more hope in the aid of the Roman people than fear in his own fortune.

1.2. And to come from the senators as a whole to individuals: Lucius Cornelius the consul, in the First Punic War, when he had captured the town of Olbia, in fighting for which Hanno, the Carthaginian general, had most bravely fallen, carried out his body from his own tent with a splendid funeral and did not hesitate to celebrate the obsequies of an enemy himself, believing that that victory alone, both among gods and among men, would carry the least odium which had carried the most humanity.

1.3. What shall I say of Quintius Crispinus, whose gentleness the most powerful passions, anger and the love of glory, could not shake? He had both received Badius the Campanian most kindly into his hospitality at his own home and, when he was seized by ill health, had restored him with most attentive care. By that man, after that wicked revolt of the Campanians, he was challenged to combat in the battle line; and although he was somewhat superior both in bodily strength and in courage of spirit, he chose to admonish the ingrate rather than to conquer him; for "What are you doing," he said, "madman, or whither does perverse desire carry you sideways? Is it too little for you to rage in public impiety, unless you have also slipped into private impiety? You alone, of course, find Quintius pleasing among the Romans, the one Roman against whom you would wickedly wield your arms—Quintius, to whose household you owe both the requital of honour and your own safety! But the bond of friendship and the gods of hospitality—pledges sacred to our blood, cheap in your breast—forbid me to engage you in hostile contest. Indeed, even if in the clash of armies I had recognized you, fortuitously laid low by the thrust of my shield-boss, I should have recalled the blade already pressed to your throat. Let it therefore be your crime to have wished to kill your host; you shall not be my host slain. Accordingly, seek some other right hand by which to die, since mine has learned to save you." The heavenly power gave to each the due end, since indeed in that battle Badius was cut down, while Quintius came off renowned for a distinguished fight.

1.4. Come now, how famous and how memorable an example ought the clemency of Marcus Marcellus to be held! When Syracuse had been captured by him, he took his stand on its citadel, so as to behold from on high the fortune of a city once most opulent, then afflicted. But gazing upon its mournful downfall, he could not restrain his weeping. If anyone, ignorant of the man, had looked upon him, he would have believed it to be another's victory. And so, city of Syracuse, in your greatest disaster you had something of congratulation mingled with it, because, if it was not permitted to you to stand unharmed, you fell gently beneath so mild a victor.

1.5. But Quintus Metellus, waging the Celtiberian war in Spain, when he was besieging the city of Centobriga and now, with the engine brought up, seemed about to throw down that part of the wall which alone could be torn away, preferred humanity to a victory near at hand: for when the people of Centobriga had set the sons of Rhoetogenes—who had gone over to Metellus—before the blows of the engine, so that the boys should not be destroyed by a cruel kind of death in the sight of their father, although Rhoetogenes himself declared that there was no hindrance to prevent him from carrying through the storming even at the cost of the destruction of his own blood, Metellus withdrew from the siege. By this so clement a deed, although he did not capture the walls of one city, he nevertheless captured the hearts of all the Celtiberian cities and brought it about that he had need of not many sieges to reduce them under the dominion of the Roman people.

1.6. The humanity of the later Africanus too was displayed splendidly and widely: for when Carthage had been stormed, he sent letters around the cities of Sicily, that they should recover through envoys the ornaments of their temples that had been carried off by the Carthaginians and take care that they be restored to their former places. A benefit equally welcome to gods and to men!

1.7. Equal to this deed is the humanity of the same man. When his quaestor was selling captives set up at the spear, a boy of outstanding beauty and gentlemanly appearance was sent to him. When he had ascertained about him that he was a Numidian, left an orphan by his father, brought up in the household of his uncle Masinissa, and that, without his uncle's knowledge, he had entered prematurely upon warfare against the Romans, Africanus judged that pardon should be granted for his error and that the reverence owed to the friendship of a king most faithful to the Roman people should be shown. And so, having presented the boy with a ring and a golden brooch and a broad-striped tunic and a Spanish cloak and an adorned horse, he sent him to Masinissa with horsemen to escort him, reckoning these to be the greatest fruits of victory—to restore their ornaments to the gods, his own blood to men.

1.8. The memory of Lucius Paulus too must be grasped in this kind of praise. When he heard that Perseus, in a brief moment of time made a captive out of a king, was being brought to him, he went to meet him adorned with the insignia of Roman command, and when Perseus tried to fall at his knees he raised him with his right hand and exhorted him to hope in the Greek tongue. Having brought him into his tent, he ordered him to sit next at his own side in the council, and did not judge him unworthy of the honour of his table. Let the battle-line be set before our gaze in which Perseus was overthrown, and the sequence of these things which I have related; men will be in doubt by which spectacle they are more delighted: for if it is noble to cast down an enemy, no less praiseworthy nevertheless is it to know how to pity the unfortunate.

1.9. This humanity of Lucius Paulus reminds me not to be silent about the clemency of Gnaeus Pompeius. He did not suffer Tigranes, king of Armenia—who both had on his own account waged great wars with the Roman people and had protected with his own forces Mithridates, that most bitter enemy of our city, when driven out of Pontus—to lie too long as a suppliant in his sight, but, having restored him with kindly words, ordered him to set back upon his head the diadem which he had cast off, and, having imposed certain conditions, restored him to his former state of fortune, judging it equally fine both to conquer kings and to make them.

1.10. How splendid an example of humanity bestowed, how pitiable an example of humanity denied did the same Gnaeus Pompeius prove! For he who had covered the brows of Tigranes with the royal emblem—his own head, stripped of three triumphal crowns, in his own kind of world had nowhere a place of burial, but, cut off from his body, was carried, deprived of a pyre, as the abominable gift of Egyptian treachery, pitiable even to the victor himself: for as soon as Caesar beheld it, forgetting the enemy he put on the face of a father-in-law and rendered to Pompeius both his own tears and those of his daughter, and took care that the head be cremated with very many and most precious perfumes. But if so mild a spirit had not existed in the divine prince, he who a little before had been held the pillar of the Roman empire—so does fortune turn the affairs of mortals—would have lain unburied. When Caesar heard of Cato's death too, he said that he both envied Cato that glory and that Cato had envied him his own, and he preserved Cato's patrimony intact for his children. And, by Hercules, the safety of Cato would have been no small part of Caesar's divine works.

1.11. The spirit of Marcus Antonius too was not lacking in the understanding of such humanity: for he handed over the body of Marcus Brutus to his own freedman for burial, and, that it might be cremated more honourably, ordered his own general's cloak to be cast upon it, esteeming the fallen enemy with his hatred laid aside; and when he learned that the cloak had been intercepted by the freedman, stirred by anger he at once punished him, having first used this preface: "What? Did you not know whose man's burial I had entrusted to you?" The fields of Philippi gladly beheld his brave and dutiful victory, but not even those words of most noble indignation did they hear unwillingly.

1e.1. Led by the commemoration of a Roman example into Macedonia, I am compelled to make proclamation of the character of Alexander, who, as his warlike valour earned him boundless glory, so his clemency earned him a special love. He, while with tireless course he traversed all nations, being once caught by a snowy storm in a certain place, himself sitting in a lofty seat near the fire, noticed a Macedonian soldier, now worn out with age, stupefied by the excessive cold; and, making his estimate not of fortune but of the age of each of them, he came down and with those hands with which he had crushed the wealth of Darius set the body, doubled up with cold, in his own seat: that would be salutary to the soldier which among the Persians had been a capital offence—to have occupied the royal throne. What wonder, then, is it if under such a leader men counted it pleasant to serve so many years, to whom the safety of a common soldier was dearer than his own eminence? The same man, yielding not to any human being but to nature and fortune, although he was slipping away through the violence of disease, nevertheless raised himself on his elbow and stretched out his right hand to all who wished to touch it. And who would not have longed to kiss that hand, which, already overwhelmed by fate, was equal—more alive in humanity than in breath—to the embrace of a most mighty army?

1e.2. A humanity not of so robust a stock, but yet itself also to be honoured with remembrance, will be told of Pisistratus, the tyrant of the Athenians. When a certain young man, inflamed with love for his maiden daughter, had kissed her, having met her by chance in public, and his wife was urging him to exact capital punishment from the young man, he replied: "If we kill those who love us, what shall we do to those by whom we are hated?" A saying least worthy to have it added that it flowed from the mouth of a tyrant. In this manner he bore his daughter's injury; his own much more praiseworthily. Torn at, throughout a dinner, with endless abuse by his friend Thrasippus, he so restrained both his temper and his voice from anger that you would have thought a servant was being abused by a tyrant. As Thrasippus was leaving, too, fearing that out of fear he would withdraw too soon from the banquet, he began to detain him with familiar invitation. Thrasippus, carried away by the impulse of his roused drunkenness, spattered his face with spittle, and yet could not inflame him to vengeance for himself. He even drew back his own sons, who were eager to come to the aid of their father's violated dignity. And on the next day, when Thrasippus wished to exact punishment from himself by a voluntary death, Pisistratus came to him and, having given his pledge that he would remain in the same degree of friendship, called him back from his purpose. If he had done nothing else worthy of the honour of remembrance, yet by these deeds he would abundantly have commended himself to posterity.

1e.3. Equally gentle was the spirit of King Pyrrhus. He had heard that at a certain banquet of the Tarentines too little honourable talk had been held about him; he summoned those who had been present and inquired whether they had said the things that had reached his ears. Then one of them said: "Unless the wine had failed us, the things which were reported to you would have been play and jest compared with what we were going to say about you." So witty an excuse of their drunkenness and so frank a confession of the truth turned the king's anger into laughter. By this clemency and moderation he achieved that the Tarentines, when sober, gave him thanks, and, when drunk, prayed for his welfare. From the same height of humanity, when the envoys of the Romans were seeking his camp to ransom captives, he sent Lyco the Molossian to meet them, that they might come more safely; and that they might be received more honourably, he himself, in royal attire, ran out beyond the gate to greet them, not corrupted by the success of his fortunes into laying aside regard for courtesy toward those who at that very time were most at odds with him in arms.

1e.4. He reaped the due fruit of so gentle a nature at the very last moment of his fate: for when, under dire auspices, he had invaded the city of the Argives, and Alcyoneus, the son of King Antigonus, had brought to his father—for Antigonus was present as a defender to his hard-pressed men—Pyrrhus's severed head, rejoicing as though he had brought some most fortunate work of victory, Antigonus rebuked the young man because, forgetful of the sudden fall of so great a man and of human chances, he exulted with unrestrained joy; and, lifting the head from the ground, he covered it with the broad-brimmed hat with which, after the custom of the Macedonians, he kept his own head veiled, and took care that, restored to the body of Pyrrhus, it be cremated most honourably. He even ordered Pyrrhus's son Helenus, dragged to him as a captive, to bear both the dress and the spirit of a king, and gave Pyrrhus's bones, enclosed in a golden urn, to be carried to his fatherland of Epirus, to his brother Alexander.

1e.5. The Campanians, however, when our army, with its consuls, had been sent under the yoke by the Samnites at the Caudine Forks, and was entering their city not only unarmed but even stripped, received it with reverence just as if it were a victor bearing the spoils of the enemy before it, and at once, by most kindly furnishing to the consuls the insignia of honour, to the soldiers clothing, arms, horses, provisions, they changed both the destitution and the disgrace of the Roman disaster. Had they used this same spirit on behalf of our empire against Hannibal too, they would not have furnished material for raging to the savage axes.

1e.6. Mention having been made of our bitterest enemy, I shall end the topic which is in hand with the works of his gentleness, which he showed toward the Roman name: for Hannibal did not suffer the body of Aemilius Paulus, slaughtered at Cannae, after it had been sought out, to lie unburied, so far as lay in his own power. Hannibal consigned Tiberius Gracchus, surrounded by an ambush of the Lucanians, with the highest honour of burial, and handed over his bones to our soldiers to be carried to his fatherland. Hannibal carried out with a lawful funeral Marcus Marcellus, slain in the Bruttian territory while he was reconnoitring the enterprises of the Carthaginians more eagerly than prudently, and, having presented him with a Punic cloak and a golden crown, placed him on the pyre. Therefore the sweetness of humanity penetrates even into the savage natures of barbarians, and softens the grim and ferocious eyes of enemies and bends the spirits most insolent in victory. Nor is it for it an arduous and difficult thing, amid opposing arms, amid swords drawn at close quarters, to find a peaceful path. It conquers anger, prostrates hatred, and mingles the enemy's blood with the enemy's tears. This drew forth even that admirable utterance of Hannibal, when he was determining the arrangements for the funerals of the Roman generals. Indeed, Paulus and Gracchus and Marcellus brought him somewhat more glory buried than overthrown, since indeed he deceived them by Punic cunning and honoured them by Roman gentleness. You too, brave and dutiful shades, were allotted obsequies not to be regretted: for as it is more to be wished to fall in one's fatherland, so it is more glorious to fall for one's fatherland, and you recovered by your valour the dignity of the final rite which had been lost through misfortune.

2.pr. ON GRATITUDE It has pleased me to set before the eyes both grateful expressions of mind and ungrateful deeds, so that to vice and to virtue their just reward of estimation might accrue from the very comparison. But since by their opposite character they have distinguished themselves, let them be separated also by our pen, and let those things hold the prior place which earn praise rather than those which earn reproach.

2.1. And to begin from public acts: when Marcius was attempting to . . . his fatherland, and, with a huge army of Volscians brought up to the gates of the city, was threatening death and darkness to the Roman empire, his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia did not suffer him by their prayers to carry out the abominable work. In their honour the senate adorned the order of matrons with most kindly decrees: for it ordained that men should yield the path to women, confessing that there had been more salvation for the commonwealth in the matron's gown than in arms, and to the ancient distinction of earrings it added the new distinction of the headband. It also permitted them to use purple raiment and golden trimmings. Besides this, it took care that a temple and an altar to Womanly Fortune should be built in that place where Coriolanus had been prevailed upon, testifying its mindful spirit of the benefit by exquisite cultivation of religion. This same spirit it showed also in the time of the Second Punic War: for when Capua was being besieged by Fulvius, and two Campanian women had refused to dismiss from their souls their goodwill toward the Romans—Vestia Oppia, a mother of a household, and Cluvia Facula, a courtesan, of whom the one daily sacrificed for the safety of our army, the other did not cease to supply sustenance to captured Roman soldiers—when that city was overwhelmed the senate restored to these women both their liberty and their goods, and declared that, if they should seek any further reward, it would gladly give it. That, amid so great rejoicing, the senators had leisure to return gratitude to two most humble women is remarkable, and still more that they returned it so promptly.

2.2. What too is more grateful than that Roman youth, which, in the consulship of Nautius and Minucius, of its own accord offered its names to the military oath, in order to bring protection to the Tusculans, whose territory the Aequi had occupied, because a few months before they had most steadfastly and most bravely defended the dominion of the Roman people? Therefore—a thing new to hear—lest a will grateful to the fatherland should seem to have grown idle, the army enrolled itself.

2.3. A great example of a grateful people shone forth in the case of Quintus Fabius Maximus: for when, after the commonwealth had been administered salutarily through five consulships, he had died, the people vied in contributing money, by which a larger and more splendid funeral procession might be conducted for him. Let someone make light of the rewards of virtue, when he observes that brave men are buried more fortunately than cowards live.

2.4. To Fabius, moreover, even while he was alive, gratitude was returned with the highest glory. When he was dictator, his master of horse Minucius, by a plebiscite—a thing which had never before been done—was made his equal, and, the army being divided, had clashed separately in Samnium with Hannibal. There, having rashly entered upon a contest that was going to have a destructive end, he was preserved by the aid of Fabius, and both himself called him father and wished him to be hailed as patron by his own legions, and, having laid aside the yoke of equal command, subjected the mastership of the horse, as was fitting, to the dictatorship, and corrected the error of the imprudent crowd by this token of a grateful mind:

2.5. as creditably, by Hercules, as did Quintus Terentius Culleo, born of a praetorian family and, among the few of the senatorial order, distinguished, who, by the best of examples, followed the chariot of the elder Africanus as he triumphed, wearing the cap of liberty on his head, because he had been a captive of the Carthaginians and had been recovered by him: for to the author of his liberty, as to a patron, he rendered, with the Roman people looking on, a deserved acknowledgment of the benefit received.

2.6. But the chariot of Flamininus, triumphing over King Philip, was attended not by one, but by two thousand citizens of Rome wearing the cap of liberty, whom he had recovered—men intercepted in the Punic wars and in slavery in Greece—and by his own care had collected and restored to their former rank. A twofold glory of that commander, by whom at once both the conquered enemy and the preserved citizens furnished a spectacle to the fatherland. The safety of those men too was doubly welcome to all, both because so many and because so grateful had recovered their longed-for state of liberty.

2.7. But Metellus, who through his persistent love toward his exiled father gained a name as renowned by his tears as others by their victories—called Pius—did not hesitate, as consul, to entreat the people on behalf of Quintus Calidius, a candidate for the praetorship, because, as tribune of the plebs, he had carried the law by which his father was restored to the citizenship. He even constantly declared him the patron of his house and family. Nor by this did he detract anything from the pre-eminence which beyond doubt he held, because it was not with a humble but with a grateful mind that he submitted his eminent dignity to the great merit of a man far his inferior.

2.8. For the impulse of Gaius Marius's grateful mind was not only outstanding but even overwhelming: for he gave the citizenship, against the terms of a treaty, in the very battle line, to two cohorts of Camertines who were sustaining the onset of the Cimbri with marvellous valour. And indeed he both truly and admirably excused this deed by saying that amid the clash of arms he had not been able to hear the words of the civil law. And truly that was then a time in which it was more fitting to defend the laws than to listen to them.

2.9. Lucius Sulla follows everywhere in the footsteps of Gaius Marius in the rivalry of praise: for as dictator he both bared his head and rose from his curule chair and dismounted from his horse for Pompey, though a private citizen, and proclaimed in the assembly that he did this gladly, mindful that by him, when he was eighteen years old, his own party had been aided with his father's army. Many distinctions came to Pompey, but I know not whether anything more admirable befell him than this, that he compelled Sulla to forget himself by the magnitude of his benefit.

2.10. Let there be, even amid the highest splendour, some place for grateful lowliness. When Marcus Cornutus the praetor was contracting, by order of the senate, for the funeral of Hirtius and Pansa, those who at that time conducted the business of undertaking promised both the use of their resources and their own ministry free of charge, because these men had fallen fighting for the commonwealth; and by persistent demand they wrung it out that the equipment of the obsequies should be assigned to be furnished by them for a single sesterce. Their praise the addition of the law-given condition increases rather than diminishes, since indeed they scorned profit, though living for nothing else than profit. With the leave of their own ashes, the kings of foreign nations will suffer themselves to be brought in after this so despised troop—kings who either ought not to have been touched upon, or ought to have been placed in the very last part of domestic examples. But that the memory of an honourable deed, performed even by these lowest of men, should not perish, let them hold a separate place, so as to seem neither added to these nor preferred to those.

2e.1. Darius, while still of private fortune, delighted by the cloak of Syloson of Samos, by a rather curious contemplation of it brought it about that it was given to him of free will—and indeed by one who desired it. How grateful an estimate of that gift was lodged in his mind he showed when he had gained the kingdom: for he handed over the whole city and island of the Samians to Syloson to enjoy. For the price of the thing was not reckoned, but the occasion of generosity was honoured, and it was looked to more from whom the gift proceeded than to whom it came.

2e.2. King Mithridates too appeared magnificently grateful, since, on behalf of Leonicus, the most ardent defender of his safety, who had been taken by the Rhodians in a naval battle, he exchanged all his captive enemies, judging it better to be cheated by his most hateful foes than not to return gratitude to one who had deserved well.

2e.3. Generous was the Roman people in the magnitude of its gift, in that it gave Asia to King Attalus as a present. But Attalus too was grateful in the equity of his will, in that he bequeathed that same Asia to the Roman people. And so neither the munificence of the one nor the mind of the other, so mindful of the benefit, can be praised in as many words as there are most ample states either given in friendship or restored in piety.

2e.4. But I know not whether especially the breast of King Masinissa was filled with the pledges of a grateful mind: for, having been enlarged more liberally than his kingdom by the benefit of Scipio and at his persuasion, he carried the memory of that illustrious gift to the very end of his life—endowed even with a long old age by the immortal gods—with the most constant faith, so that not only Africa but all nations knew that he survived a greater friend to the Cornelian family and to the city of Rome than to his very self. He, when he was hard pressed by a grievous war with the Carthaginians and scarcely sufficed for the protection of his own empire, nevertheless handed over to Scipio Aemilianus, because he was the grandson of Africanus, a good and great part of his Numidian army, which he might lead into Spain to Lucullus the consul, by whom he had been sent to seek auxiliaries, and, with most ready mind, preferred regard for an old benefit to a present danger. He, when, his age now failing, he was sinking on his couch, leaving the great resources of his kingdom to a number of four-and-fifty sons, besought by letter Manius Manilius, who as proconsul held Africa, to send to him Scipio Aemilianus, then serving under him, thinking his death would be the more fortunate if he laid his last breath and his last instructions in the embrace of his right hand. He, as Scipio's arrival was outrun by his fate, had given these instructions to his wife and children: that they should know one people on earth, the Roman, and one house among the Roman people, that of Scipio; that they should reserve everything intact for Aemilianus; that they should hold him the arbiter of dividing the kingdom; and that what he had determined they should hold immutable and sacred, just as if it had been provided for by a will. By so many and such various deeds, in an unwearied series of devotion, Masinissa extended himself to his hundredth year. By these and similar examples the beneficence of the human race is nourished and increased: these are its torches, these its goads, by which it burns with the desire of helping and of deserving well. And truly the most ample and most splendid riches are these: to be able to be rated widely by benefits happily bestowed. Since we have established the religious worship of these, we shall now relate the neglect of them, by way of branding it, that it may be the more pleasing.

3.1. ON THE UNGRATEFUL The senate mangled in the senate-house the parent of our city, placed by him on the highest step of dignity, and did not count it a crime to take away life from one who had implanted an eternal breath in the Roman empire. A rude indeed and savage age, which not even the highest piety of posterity can disguise, foully stained as it is with the blood of its founder.

3.2a. This error of an ungratefully fallen mind a fitting repentance of our state follows. The most joyous increase and the most certain safeguard of Roman strength, Furius Camillus, could not preserve his own safety in the city whose safety he himself had established, whose good fortune he had increased: for, by Lucius Apuleius the tribune of the plebs, he was made a defendant as though an embezzler of the Veientine plunder, and by harsh and, if I may so say, iron verdicts was sent into exile—and indeed at that time when, robbed of his son, a young man of the best disposition, he ought to have been relieved by consolations rather than burdened with calamities. But the fatherland, forgetful of so great a man's greatest services, joined to the obsequies of the son the condemnation of the father. "But," it says, "the tribune of the plebs complained that fifteen thousand asses were missing from the treasury": for at so much was the penalty fixed. A sum unworthy on account of which the Roman people should lack such a leader!

3.2b. While the former complaint was still quivering, another arises in succession. The elder Africanus rendered the commonwealth, not only bruised and broken by the arms of the Punic War but already almost bloodless and dying, mistress of Carthage. His most illustrious services they repaid with wrongs: his fellow citizens made him a dweller of an ignoble village and a neighbour of a deserted marsh. And the bitterness of his voluntary exile he did not carry to the shades below in silence, ordering it to be inscribed on his tomb: "Ungrateful fatherland, you do not even have my bones." What is more unworthy than that necessity, or juster than that complaint, or more moderate than that revenge? It denied him its ashes, whom it had not suffered to crumble into ash. Therefore the city of Rome felt this one vengeance of an ungrateful mind from Scipio—a greater one, by Hercules, than the violence of Coriolanus: for the latter assailed his fatherland with fear, the former with shame. And of this he could not even bear to complain—such was the steadfastness of his true piety—except after his death.

3.2c. To one who had suffered such things, I believe, the things which befell his brother could be a consolation. For King Antiochus conquered, and Asia added to the dominion of the Roman people, and a most splendid triumph, furnished the cause for him to be made a defendant for embezzlement and ordered to be led to prison.

3.2d. In no way inferior in virtue, the younger Africanus, though less than his grandsire, was not even happier in his end: for, two cities, Numantia and Carthage, which were menacing the Roman empire, having been driven from the nature of things, he found at home the robber of his breath, and did not find in the forum the avenger of his death.

3.2e. Who is ignorant that Scipio Nasica earned in the toga as much praise as either Africanus in arms—he who did not suffer the commonwealth, seized by the throat by the destructive band of Tiberius Gracchus, to be strangled? But he too, on account of the most unjust estimation of his virtues among the citizens, withdrew to Pergamum under the title of an embassy, and passed what remained of his life there without any longing for an ungrateful fatherland.

3.2f. I am still engaged with the same name, nor have I yet exhausted the complaints of the Cornelian clan: for Publius Lentulus, a most illustrious citizen and most devoted to the commonwealth, when on the Aventine he had routed by a dutiful and brave fight the wicked attempts and the battle-line of Gaius Gracchus, having received great wounds, bore this reward of that battle in which he had retained the laws, peace, and liberty in their proper state—that he should not die in our city: since indeed, driven by envy and detraction, having obtained a free embassy from the senate and held an assembly in which he prayed to the immortal gods that he might never return to an ungrateful people, he set out for Sicily and, by perseveringly remaining there, made himself master of his prayer. Five Cornelii, then, one after another, are just so many most notorious examples of an ungrateful fatherland.

3.2g. And of these the withdrawals were indeed voluntary: but Ahala, when as master of horse he had killed Spurius Maelius, who was aiming at kingship, paid the penalty for the liberty of the citizens that he had guarded by his own exile.

3.3. But as the mind of the senate and people, stirred up after the manner of a sudden storm, is to be pursued with gentle complaint, so the ungrateful deeds of individuals are to be reviled with freer indignation, because, masters of their own counsel, when it was permitted to weigh each side by reason, they preferred crime to piety: for with what cloudburst, with what storm of words does the impious head of Sextilius deserve to be overwhelmed, who did not shrink to tear Gaius Caesar—by whom both zealously and even successfully he had been defended as a defendant on a most grievous charge—from the rites of his treacherous table and the altars of his abominable household gods, when Caesar, a fugitive at the time of the Cinnan proscription, was compelled to implore his protection on the Tarquinian estate by the condition of his disaster and to claim it by the right of the benefit, and to hand him over to the savage victor to be slaughtered? Suppose his accuser, turned by public fortune into the name of a suppliant, had begged with so lamentable an entreaty, clasping his knees: still he would seem cruelly repulsed, because misery makes pleasing even those whom injury makes hateful. But Sextilius set, with his own hands, not his accuser but his patron before the most savage violence of his enemy—a man unworthy of life if through fear of death, most worthy of death if through hope of reward.

3.4. But to pass to another act of an ungrateful mind consonant with this: Marcus Cicero defended Gaius Popilius Laenas of the Picene region, at the request of Marcus Caelius, with no less care than eloquence, and, when his cause was very doubtful and wavering, sent him home safe to his household gods. This Popilius afterwards, neither in deed nor in word injured by Cicero, of his own accord asked Marcus Antonius that he might be sent to pursue and slay that proscribed man; and, having obtained the role of that detestable service, exulting with joy he ran to Caieta and ordered the man—I pass over that he was of the highest dignity, but certainly one distinguished by the office of saving help . . . to be venerated by him privately—to offer his throat, and at once, in supreme and untroubled leisure, cut off the head of Roman eloquence and the most illustrious right hand of peace, and returned to the city, brisk with that burden as though with rich spoils: for it did not occur to one carrying so wicked a load that he bore that head which had once pleaded on behalf of his own. Too weak are letters to brand this monster, since one who could lament such a fall of Cicero worthily enough—another Cicero—does not exist.

3.5. In what manner I am now to touch upon you, Pompey the Great, I know not: for I both behold the greatness of your fortune, which once had occupied all lands and all seas with its splendour, and I remember that its ruin is greater than ought to be attempted by my hand. But nevertheless, even though we too be silent, the death of Gnaeus Carbo—by whom, when a very young man, you were protected as you contended in the forum about your father's goods, and who was slain by your order—will hover before the minds of men not without some reproach, because by so ungrateful a deed you indulged the power of Lucius Sulla more than your own sense of shame.

3e.1. And that foreign cities may not insult us when we have confessed our faults: the Carthaginians resolved to remove from their sight Hannibal—who, on behalf of their safety and victory, had slaughtered so many of our generals and so many of our armies as, if he had killed so many common soldiers of the enemy, would have been a matter of great glory.

3e.2. Lacedaemon bore no man either greater or more useful than Lycurgus, since indeed Pythian Apollo is reported to have answered him, when he sought an oracle, that he knew not whether to enrol him in the number of men or of gods. Yet neither the utmost purity of his life, nor his most constant love toward his fatherland, nor the laws salutarily devised could avail him so that he should not experience hostile citizens: for he was often pelted with stones, at one time driven from the forum, even deprived of an eye, and at last expelled from the very fatherland. What would other cities do, when even that one which claims for itself an outstanding praise of steadfastness and moderation and gravity proved so ungrateful toward one who had deserved so well?

3e.3. Take Theseus away from the Athenians, and there will be no Athens, or not so famous an Athens, since indeed he gathered into one city his citizens, scattered in villages, and imposed upon a people living separately and after the rustic manner the form and image of a most ample state. The same man, when scarcely yet arrived at the age of youth, repelled the cruel commands of that most powerful king Minos; the same man tamed the unbridled insolence of Thebes; the same man brought aid to the children of Hercules, and crushed by the courage of his spirit and the strength of his right hand whatever of monster or of crime there was anywhere. Yet, when he had been removed from the Athenians, Scyros, an island smaller than Delos, received his bones when dead. And further, Solon, who brought to the Athenians laws so excellent and so useful that, if they had been willing to use them perpetually, they would have had everlasting empire; who recovered Salamis, like a hostile citadel from close at hand threatening their safety; who first saw the tyranny of Pisistratus arising and alone dared openly and repeatedly to declare that it ought to be crushed by arms—he passed his old age a fugitive in Cyprus, nor did it fall to his lot to be buried in the fatherland of which he had deserved so well. Well would the Athenians have dealt with Miltiades, if, after the three hundred thousand Persians were conquered at Marathon, they had sent him straight into exile and not compelled him to die in prison and in chains. But, I suppose, they thought they had raged abundantly thus far against one who had deserved so well. Nay, not even his body did they suffer, when they had forced it to expire thus, to be consigned to burial before his son Cimon delivered himself to be bound with the same chains. This paternal inheritance—chains and prison—the son of the greatest general, himself destined to be the greatest general of his age, could boast that he alone had inherited. Aristides too, by whom the justice of all Greece is reckoned, and who was an outstanding example of self-restraint as well, was ordered to depart his fatherland. Happy Athens, which after his exile could find anyone either a good man or a citizen loving his country, when with him at that time holiness itself migrated! Themistocles, the most celebrated example of those who have experienced an ungrateful fatherland—when he had rendered it unharmed, famous, opulent, the chief of Greece—felt it so far hostile that he was compelled to flee to the unmerited mercy of Xerxes, whom a little before he had destroyed. Phocion indeed, most amply furnished with those gifts which are judged most powerful to produce the love of men—clemency and generosity—was all but set upon the rack by the Athenians. Certainly after his death he found no little clod of the Attic region to be cast upon his bones, being ordered to be thrown beyond those borders within which the best of citizens had lived. What, then, is wanting to prevent it from being judged a public madness, by the highest consensus to punish the greatest virtues as though the gravest offences and to repay benefits with injuries? This, as everywhere, so especially at Athens, ought to seem intolerable—in which city an action against the ungrateful was established, and rightly, because the commerce of giving and receiving a benefit, without which the life of men scarcely . . . is taken away by whoever neglects to return equal gratitude to one who has deserved well. How great a reproach, then, do those deserve who, when they had the most equitable laws but the most iniquitous dispositions, preferred to use their own characters rather than the laws? But if by any providence of the gods it could be brought about that those most excellent men, whose misfortunes I have just related, holding to the law that avenges the ungrateful, should drag their fatherland into court before another state, would they not have rendered an ingenious and garrulous people mute and tongueless by this demand? "Your discordant hearths and the divided cottages of your villages were made the pillar of Greece: Marathon shines with Persian trophies; Salamis and Artemisium count the shipwrecks of Xerxes; the walls drained by mighty hands rise up in fairer works. The authors of these things—where did they live? Where do they lie? Answer! Indeed you compelled Theseus to be buried on a tiny rock, and Miltiades to die in prison, and Cimon to put on his father's chains, and Themistocles the conqueror to clasp the knees of his conquered enemy, and Solon together with Aristides and Phocion to flee your household gods, ungrateful one—while meanwhile, our ashes being foully and pitiably scattered, you honour, decorated with the honour of an altar, more sacred than the sanctuaries, between the very Areopagus, that venerable dwelling of divine and human contention, and the lofty citadel of guardian Minerva, the remains of Oedipus, polluted by the murder of his father and the marriage of his mother. So much more pleasing to you are others' evils than your own goods. Read, then, the law which holds you bound by an oath, and, because you were unwilling to render the due rewards to those who deserved well, pay the just expiations to those you have injured." Their mute shades are silent, bound by the necessity of fate; but Athens, forgetful of benefits, with a tongue loosed for licentious speech, is not silent in answering reproach.

4.pr. But let us pass over the ungrateful and rather speak of the dutiful: for it is somewhat better to give one's leisure to a pleasing than to a hateful subject. Come, then, into our hands, prosperous prayers of parents, offspring propagated under happy auspices, you who bring it about that it is both a joy to have begotten and a pleasure to beget.

4.1. ON DUTIFULNESS TOWARD PARENTS AND BROTHERS AND FATHERLAND Coriolanus, a man of the greatest spirit and the deepest counsel, and most excellently deserving of the commonwealth, prostrated by the ruin of a most unjust condemnation, fled to the Volscians, then hostile to the Romans. Everywhere virtue is valued at a great price. And so, in the very place to which he had come seeking a hiding-place, he there in a short time attained the supreme command, and it came to pass that he whom the citizens had been unwilling to have as a salutary commander for themselves they should experience as an almost destructive leader against themselves: for, our armies being frequently routed, he built for the Volscian soldier, by the steps of his victories, an approach right up to the walls of the city. Wherefore that people, fastidious in valuing its own goods, which had not spared the defendant, was compelled to entreat the exile. The envoys sent to plead with him accomplished nothing; the priests then sent with their fillets returned equally without effect. The senate was stupefied, the people trembled, men and women alike lamented the impending destruction. Then Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, dragging with her his wife Volumnia and his children, sought the camp of the Volscians. As soon as her son beheld her, "You have stormed," he said, "and conquered my anger, fatherland, by the prayers of this woman brought near, to whose womb I grant you, hateful to me though you deservedly are," and at once freed the Roman territory from hostile arms. Therefore his breast, filled with grief at the injury received, with hope of obtaining victory, with shame at refusing his commission, with fear of death, was wholly emptied of all this for itself by dutifulness; and the sight of a single parent changed an atrocious war into a salutary peace.

4.2. The same dutifulness armed with manly strength the elder Africanus, inflamed by his own powers when he had scarcely entered the years of puberty, to bring aid to his father in the battle line: for, when his father, as consul, was fighting under adverse auspices with Hannibal at the river Ticinus, grievously wounded, he saved him by his own intervention; nor could either the weakness of his age, or his rawness in soldiering, or the issue of an unfortunate battle—to be dreaded even by a veteran warrior—interrupt him, so that he should not, conspicuous with a twofold glory, earn the crown by snatching at once his commander and his father from death itself.

4.3. With its ears the Roman state received these examples so renowned; the following it saw with its eyes. Pomponius the tribune of the plebs had named a day for Lucius Manlius Torquatus before the people, because, induced by the opportunity of finishing the war well, he had exceeded the lawful term for holding his command, and because he was withdrawing his son, a young man of the best disposition, from public uses, burdening him with rustic labour. After the young Manlius learned of this, he at once sought the city and at first light directed himself to the house of Pomponius. He, thinking that he had come for this, to lay information about the charges against his father, by whom he was treated more harshly than was right, ordered all to leave the bedchamber, that he might more freely carry through the information with the witnesses removed. Having gained an opportunity suited to his purpose, the young man drew the sword which he had brought concealed and, having compelled the tribune by threats and terror, forced him to swear that he would withdraw from the accusation of his father; and by this it was brought about that Torquatus did not plead his cause. Commendable is the dutifulness that is shown to gentle parents; but Manlius, the more grim a father he had, the more praiseworthily did he come to his aid in his peril, because to love him he had been invited, beyond natural affection, by no charm of indulgence.

4.4. Emulating this dutifulness, Marcus Cotta, on the very day on which he assumed the toga of manhood, immediately, as he came down from the Capitol, indicted Gnaeus Carbo, by whom his father had been condemned, and, having carried the prosecution through, ruined the defendant by the verdict, inaugurating both his talent and his youth by a most illustrious work.

4.5. In the case of Gaius Flaminius too a father's authority was equally powerful: for when, as tribune of the plebs, he had promulgated a law on dividing the Gallic land man by man, against the will and resistance of the senate, resisting most fiercely its prayers and threats, and not deterred even by an army enrolled against him should he persevere in the same purpose—after, before the rostra, as he was now bringing forward the law, his father laid a hand on him, broken by a private command he came down from the rostra, not reproached by even the slightest murmur of the deserted assembly.

4.6. Great are these works of manly dutifulness, but I know not whether more powerful and more spirited than all of them is the deed of Claudia, a Vestal virgin. When she had noticed her father, as he was triumphing, being dragged from his chariot by the violent hand of a tribune of the plebs, with marvellous swiftness, by interposing herself between the two, she drove off the most ample power kindled with enmity. Therefore the father led one triumph to the Capitol, the daughter another to the temple of Vesta; nor could it be discerned to which more praise should be assigned, the one whom victory accompanied or the one whom dutifulness.

4.7. Forgive me, most ancient hearths, and grant pardon, eternal fires, if from your most sacred temple the texture of my work shall have advanced to a part of the city more necessary than splendid: for by no bitterness of fortune, by no squalor does the price of dear dutifulness grow cheap—nay, it has the more certain proof the more wretched it is. A praetor handed over a woman of freeborn blood, condemned at his tribunal on a capital charge, to a triumvir to be put to death in prison. He who was in charge of the custody, having received her, moved by pity, did not strangle her at once: he even gave her daughter access to her, but only after she had been carefully searched, lest she should bring in any food, thinking that the result would be that she would be consumed by starvation. But when several days had now passed, asking himself by what means she was being sustained for so long, having observed the daughter more carefully, he noticed her relieving the hunger of her mother by the help of her own milk, with her breast bared. The novelty of so admirable a spectacle, reported by him himself to the triumvir, by the triumvir to the praetor, by the praetor to the council of judges, obtained a remission of the penalty for the woman. Whither does dutifulness not penetrate, or what does it not devise, which found a new means of saving a mother in prison? For what is so unusual, what so unheard of, as a mother nourished by the breasts of her daughter? One might think this was done against the nature of things, were it not that to love one's parents is the first law of nature.

4e.1. Let the same be deemed proclaimed concerning the dutifulness of Pero, who nourished her father Mycon, afflicted by a like fortune and consigned to a like custody, now in the last stage of old age, brought to her breast as though he were an infant. The eyes of men cling and are amazed when they see the painted image of this deed, and by their wonder at the present spectacle they renew the circumstance of the ancient event, believing that in those mute outlines of the limbs they behold living and breathing bodies. This necessarily happens to the mind also, somewhat more effectively reminded by the painting than by letters to recall old deeds in place of recent ones.

4e.2. Nor shall I wrap you too in silence, Cimon, who did not hesitate to buy your father burial with voluntary chains: for although it afterwards befell you to turn out a great man, both citizen and general, yet you gained somewhat more praise in prison than in the senate-house: for the other virtues deserve much, but only of admiration; dutifulness, however, deserves most also of love.

4e.3. You too, brothers, I shall embrace in remembrance, whose spirit was nobler than your origin, since indeed, born very humble in Spain, by spending your breath for the sustenance of your parents you became famous by the glorious ending of your life: for, having agreed with the Paciaeci that twelve thousand sesterces should be given after your death to your parents, on condition that you should kill Etpastus, the tyrant of their nation, the slayer of their father, you not only dared a notable deed but also closed it with a vigorous and brave ending: for with the same hands you brought forth for the Paciaeci vengeance, for Etpastus punishment, for your parents nourishment, for yourselves a glorious fate. And so even now you live in your tombs, because you judged it better to protect your parents' old age than to await your own.

4e.4. Better known are the pairs of brothers Cleobis and Biton, Amphinomus and Anapias—the former because they drew their mother to perform the rites of Juno, the latter because they carried their father and mother on their shoulders through the midst of the fires—but for neither pair was it the purpose to expire in place of their parents' breath.

4e.5. Nor do I disparage the Argive praise or diminish the glory of Mount Etna, but I bring the light of notice to a dutifulness more obscure on account of unfamiliarity, just as I gladly render to the Scythians the testimony of dutifulness: for, when Darius with all the forces of his kingdom was repeatedly making an onset into their regions, gradually yielding they had now reached the furthest wildernesses. Then, asked by him through envoys what end of flight or what beginning of fighting they would make, they answered that they had neither any cities nor any cultivated fields for which they might contend; but that, when he had come to the monuments of their parents, he would learn how the Scythians were wont to fight. By this one so dutiful a saying an unsociable and barbarous nation redeemed itself from all charge of savagery. The first, therefore, and best teacher of dutifulness is the nature of things, which, needing no service of the voice, no use of letters, pours the love of children into the breasts of parents by its own silent powers. What, then, does instruction accomplish? That natures may become more polished, of course, not better, since indeed solid virtue is born rather than fashioned:

4e.6. for who taught those who wander in wagons and cover their bodies in the hiding-places of forests, and live after the manner of wild beasts on the mangled flesh of cattle, to answer Darius thus? That same nature, surely, which instructed even the son of Croesus, deprived of the use of speech, in the service of his voice to protect the safety of his father: for, when Sardis had been captured by Cyrus, and one of the number of the Persians, ignorant of the man, was being carried with roused impulse to his slaughter, as though forgetting what fortune had denied him at his birth, by crying out that he should not kill King Croesus, he recalled the blade already all but pressed to his throat. Thus he who up to that time had lived mute for himself was made vocal for the safety of his parent.

4e.7. The same love, in the Italian War, armed a young man of Pinna, who was surnamed Pulto, with such strength of spirit and of body that, when he was in charge of the barriers of his besieged city, and the Roman commander had stationed his captive father in his sight and surrounded him with the drawn swords of soldiers, threatening that he would kill him unless he gave passage for his irruption, the youth alone snatched the old man from their hands—memorable for a twofold dutifulness, in that he was both the saviour of his father and not the betrayer of his fatherland.

5.pr. This love the next degree, that of brotherly goodwill, succeeds: for as it is deservedly held the first bond of affection to have received the most and greatest benefits, so it ought to be judged the next to have received them at the same time. For how full of sweetness is that recollection: in the same dwelling I lived before I was born; in the same cradle I passed the seasons of infancy; the same parents I called by name; the same vows watched over me; an equal glory from the images of our ancestors I drew! Dear is a wife, sweet are children, agreeable are friends, welcome are relations by marriage—but, as they are known afterward, no goodwill ought to accrue which would drain away the earlier.

5.1. And I say this with Scipio Africanus as witness, who, although he was joined to Laelius by the closest intimacy, nevertheless as a suppliant begged the senate that the lot of the province should not be taken from his brother and transferred to himself, and promised that he would go as a legate to Lucius Scipio in Asia—both the elder to the younger, and the bravest to the unwarlike, and one excelling in glory to one poor in renown, and—what surpasses all—being already Africanus, to one not yet Asiaticus. And so of the two most illustrious surnames he took one and gave the other; the bordered robe of this man's triumph he took, that man's he handed over—in service somewhat greater than his brother was in command.

5.2. But Marcus Fabius the consul, the Etruscans and Veientes having been conquered in a renowned battle, did not endure to lead the triumph offered to him with the highest zeal of senate and people, because in that battle his brother Quintus Fabius, a man of consular rank, fighting most bravely, had fallen. How great a dutifulness of brotherly love may we judge to have dwelt in that breast, on account of which so great a brilliance of the most ample honour could be extinguished?

5.3. By that example antiquity was adorned, by this one our own age, to which it has fallen to behold the brotherly yoke—the glory first of the Claudian, now also of the Julian clan: for our prince and parent had so great a love implanted in his soul for his brother Drusus that, when, at Ticinum—whither, victor over the enemy, he had come to embrace his parents—he learned that Drusus was tossing in Germany in a grave and dangerous illness, at once, thunderstruck with fear, he burst forth from there. How rapid and headlong his journey was, as though in a single breath, is plain from this, that, having crossed the Alps and the Rhine, by day and night, his horse repeatedly changed, with Namantabagius as his guide, content with him as his only companion, he traversed two hundred miles through a barbarian land but lately conquered. But him, then entangled in the greatest toil and danger and worn out by the throng of mortals, the most sacred divinity of dutifulness, and the gods who favour outstanding virtues, and Jupiter, the most faithful guardian of the Roman empire, accompanied. Drusus too, although he was now nearer to his own fate than to his brother's offices, sinking in the vigour of his spirit and the strength of his body, yet at that very moment by which life and death are distinguished, ordered the legions to come forth with their standards to meet his brother, so that he might be saluted as commander. He even directed that the headquarters be set up on the right-hand side for him, and willed that he should hold both the consular and the imperatorial name; and at the same time he both yielded to his brother's majesty and departed from life. To these men I know indeed that no other model of kindred affection can fittingly be added than that of Castor and Pollux,

5.4. but it will surely not be ungrateful to the most illustrious commanders of all memory if a soldier's supreme dutifulness toward his brother attaches itself to this part of the volume: for he, performing his service in the camp of Gnaeus Pompeius, when he had killed at close quarters a Sertorian soldier who was pressing him too keenly in the battle line, and as he was stripping him as he lay, recognized him to be his own full brother; having long and much pursued the gods with reproaches for the gift of an impious victory, he carried him near the camp and, having covered him with a precious garment, placed him on the pyre. And then, the torch set beneath, he at once with the same sword with which he had killed him pierced through his own breast, and, prostrate over the body of his brother, gave himself to be cremated in the common flames. It was permitted him, by the benefit of his ignorance, to live an innocent man; but, that he might use his own dutifulness rather than another's pardon, he was not wanting as a companion to his brother's death.

6.pr. To the closest bonds of blood dutifulness has done enough: it remains now that it be shown toward the fatherland. To the majesty of the fatherland even that authority of parents which is equated with the powers of the gods submits its strength, and brotherly affection too yields with an even and willing mind—and indeed with the highest reason, because when a house is overthrown the state of the commonwealth can remain whole, whereas at the ruin of the city the household gods of all are necessarily dragged down with it. But what need is there to embrace these things in words, whose power is so great that some have testified to them at the cost of their own safety?

6.1. The consul Brutus, the first to hold that office, clashed on horseback with Arruns, the son of Tarquinius Superbus expelled from his kingdom, in such a way that, their spears thrust at once, each, struck by a deadly wound, was laid low lifeless. Deservedly might I add that liberty cost the Roman people dear.

6.2. When, moreover, in the middle part of the forum the earth sank down in a vast and sudden chasm, and the answer was given that it could be filled only by that in which the Roman people was strongest, Curtius, a young man of the noblest spirit and of the noblest birth, interpreting that our city excels especially in valour and arms, adorned with military insignia, mounted his horse and, the spurs vehemently applied, drove it headlong into that abyss; upon him all the citizens, for the sake of honour, vying with one another threw fruits, and at once the earth recovered its former state. Great glories afterward shone in the Roman forum, yet none even today hovers before us more illustrious than the dutifulness of Curtius toward his fatherland. To this man, holding the chief place of glory, I shall append a like deed.

6.3. As the praetor Genucius Cipus, in his general's cloak, was going out of the gate, a portent of a new and unheard-of kind befell him: for on his head horns suddenly crept up as it were, and the answer was given that he would be king if he returned to the city. That this might not happen, he proclaimed for himself a voluntary and perpetual exile—a dutifulness worthy, so far as it concerns solid glory, to be preferred to seven kings. As witness to it, a bronze likeness of his head was set into the gate by which he had departed and was called the Raudusculan: for of old bronze pieces were called raudera.

6.4. Genucius hands over the succession of this praise, than which one can scarcely be conceived greater, to the praetor Aelius. When, as he was administering justice, a woodpecker had settled on his head, and the soothsayers had affirmed that, if it were preserved, the state of his house would be most happy, that of the commonwealth most wretched, but, if it were killed, each would turn out the contrary, he with his own bite killed the woodpecker on the spot, in the sight of the senate. The Aelian family then lost seventeen men of outstanding bravery in the battle of Cannae; the commonwealth, as time went on, rose to the highest summit of empire. These examples, doubtless, Sulla and Marius and Cinna laughed at as foolish.

6.5. Publius Decius Mus, who first brought the consulship into his family, when in the Latin War he saw the Roman line wavering and now almost prostrate, devoted his own life for the safety of the commonwealth and at once, his horse spurred on, burst into the midst of the enemy's column, seeking safety for his fatherland, death for himself, and, having made an immense slaughter, overwhelmed by very many weapons, fell upon them. From his wounds and his blood an unhoped-for victory emerged.

6.6. He would be the sole model of such a commander, had he not begotten a son answering to his own spirit: for he, in his fourth consulship, following his father's example, by a like devotion, in an equally vigorous fight, with a consonant end, restored the tottering and lost strength of our city. And so it is hard to discern whether the Roman state had the Decii more usefully as leaders or lost them, since their life stood in the way that it should not be conquered, while their death made it conquer.

6.7. The elder Scipio Africanus was not extinguished for the commonwealth, but by admirable virtue provided that the commonwealth should not be extinguished: since indeed, when, our city stricken by the disaster of Cannae, it seemed nothing other than the prey of the victor, and therefore the remnants of the routed army, on the proposal of Quintus Metellus, were debating the plan of deserting Italy, the military tribune, still a very young man, with sword drawn, threatening death to each man, compelled all to swear that they would never abandon the fatherland, and not only displayed the fullest dutifulness himself but even recalled it as it was departing from the breasts of others.

6.8. Come now, that I may pass from individuals to all together: with how great and how equal a love of the fatherland did the whole state burn! For when, in the Second Punic War, the treasury was so exhausted that it did not suffice even for the worship of the gods, the tax-farmers of their own accord approached the censors and urged them to let out all the contracts just as if the commonwealth abounded in money, and promised that they would furnish everything and would seek not a single as until the war was finished. The masters too of those slaves whom Sempronius Gracchus had set free for a notable battle at Beneventum forbore to exact the prices from the commander. In the camp also neither knight nor centurion desired pay to be given to him. Men and women contributed whatever of gold or silver they had, the children likewise the insignia of their freeborn status, to support the difficulty of the time. And not even of the senate's benefit—which had freed those who performed these services from the burden of tribute—did anyone wish to avail himself, but moreover all rendered it with the most ready minds: for they were not unaware that, when Veii was captured, since the gold owed under the name of the tithe which Camillus had vowed had to be sent to Delphic Apollo, and there was no means of buying it, the matrons had brought their ornaments into the treasury; and likewise they had heard that a thousand pounds of gold, which was owed to the Gauls for the abandoned siege of the Capitol, had been made up out of their adornment. And so, admonished both by their own disposition and by the example of antiquity, they judged that they should be slack in no matter.

6e.1. There are external examples also of the same purpose. Codrus, king of the Athenians, when the Attic region, weakened by an immense army of the enemy, was being laid waste with iron and fire, in distrust of human aid took refuge in the oracle of Delphic Apollo and through envoys inquired by what means that so grievous war might be dispelled. The god answered that there would be an end of it for him thus, if he himself fell by a hostile hand. This indeed spread abroad not only throughout all Athens but even in the opposing camp, and so it came about that it was proclaimed that no one should wound the body of Codrus. After he learned this, having laid aside the insignia of command, he put on the dress of a servant and cast himself into a band of foraging enemies, and, by striking one of them with his sickle, drove him to his own slaying. By his death it was brought about that Athens should not perish.

6e.2. From the same fountain of dutifulness flowed the spirit of Thrasybulus also. He, when he desired to free the city of the Athenians from the most foul domination of the Thirty Tyrants and was attacking the mass of a most mighty enterprise with a small band, and when one of his confederates had said, "What great thanks, pray, will the Athenians owe to you for the liberty gained through you?" answered, "May the gods grant that I may seem to have repaid as much as I myself owe to them." By this disposition he crowned with praise the renowned work of the tyranny destroyed.

6e.3. Themistocles, moreover, whom his own virtue had made a conqueror, and the injury of his fatherland had made commander of the Persians, that he might refrain from assailing it, having set up a sacrifice, received and drank in a bowl the blood of a bull, and before the very altar fell, like a certain illustrious victim of dutifulness. By this so memorable a departure of his it was brought about that Greece should not have need of a second Themistocles.

6e.4. There follows an example of the same kind. When between Carthage and Cyrene there was a most obstinate contention about the measure of territory, at last it was agreed that young men should be sent from each side at the same time and that the place at which these should meet should be held the boundary for both peoples. But this agreement two brothers of the Carthaginians, by name the Philaeni, anticipated by treachery, hastening their pace before the appointed hour and pushing the boundaries forward into the distance. When the young men of the Cyrenians had perceived this, having long complained of their deceit, at last by the harshness of a condition they tried to break up the wrong: for they said that the boundary would be ratified thus, if the Philaeni suffered themselves to be buried alive there. But the outcome did not answer to the design: for they, with no delay interposed, handed over their bodies to be covered by the earth there. They, since they preferred the boundaries of their fatherland to be longer than those of their own life, lie well, with the Punic empire widened by their hands and their bones. Where are the lofty walls of proud Carthage? Where the maritime glory of its renowned harbour? Where its fleet terrible to all shores? Where so many armies? Where so great a cavalry? Where its spirit not content with the immense space of Africa? All these things fortune has divided between two Scipios: but the memory of the noble deed of the Philaeni not even the destruction of their fatherland extinguished. There is nothing, therefore, except virtue, which by a mortal mind and hand can be sought as immortal.

6e.5. This dutifulness is full of youthful ardour. But Aristotle, scarcely guarding the last remnants of his life in his aged and wrinkled limbs in the highest leisure of letters, so vigorously watched over the safety of his fatherland that, lying on his sickbed at Athens, he raised it up again when it had been levelled to the ground by hostile arms—and indeed by the hands of the Macedonians, by whom it had been cast down. Thus the work known is not so much the city overthrown and ruined by Alexander as restored by Aristotle. It is plain, therefore, how kindly and how lavish a dutifulness toward the fatherland men of all orders, of every age, have displayed; and to the most sacred laws of nature the abundance of marvellous examples too has subscribed its testimony, illustrious to the world.

7.pr. ON PARENTS' LOVE AND INDULGENCE TOWARD THEIR CHILDREN Let now the indulgence of the dutiful and gentle affection of parents toward their children spread its sails, and, borne forward by a salutary breeze, bring with it the pleasing endowment of sweetness.

7.1. Fabius Rullianus, after five consulships had been carried through with the highest glory and after all the campaigns both of valour and of life had been served out, did not refuse to go as a legate to his son Fabius Gurges, to bring to completion a difficult and dangerous war—about to serve, almost with his spirit alone, so to speak, without his body, inasmuch as, on account of his extreme old age, he was fitter for the leisure of his couch than for the toil of battles. The same man counted it among his greatest pleasures to follow on horseback, as he triumphed, the son whom he himself, when a little child, had carried in his own triumphs, and he was beheld not as an addition to that glorious procession, but as its author.

7.2. Less splendid was the lot of Caesetius, a Roman knight, in respect of his fatherland, but his indulgence was equal. When he was ordered by Caesar—now victor over all enemies both foreign and domestic—to disown his son, because that son, as tribune of the plebs with his colleague Marullus, had raised odium against Caesar as one aiming at kingship, he ventured to answer in this manner: "More quickly will you, Caesar, snatch from me all my sons than I will drive out one of them by my mark of disgrace." Now he had besides two sons of the best disposition, to whom Caesar was promising that he would kindly give increases of dignity. Although the supreme clemency of the divine prince kept this father safe, yet who would not think that he had ventured something greater than human disposition could compass, in that he did not yield to one to whom the whole world had succumbed?

7.3. But I know not whether Octavius Balbus was of a more impetuous and more ardent goodwill toward his son. Proscribed by the triumvirs, when he had secretly gone out of his house by the back door and now had a ready beginning of flight, after he had received, by a false outcry of the neighbourhood, the report that his son was being slaughtered within, he offered himself to that death which he had escaped and handed himself over to the soldiers to be killed, valuing, doubtless, that moment in which it had befallen him to see his son safe beyond his hope more than his own safety. Wretched the eyes of the young man, with which he was compelled to behold his father, most loving of him, thus expiring by his own doing!

7e.1. But, to come to things more pleasant to learn of: Antiochus, son of King Seleucus, seized by a boundless love for his stepmother Stratonice, mindful with what wicked flames he was burning, covered the impious wound of his breast with dutiful dissimulation. And so contrary affections, enclosed in the same flesh and marrow—the highest desire and the greatest modesty—reduced his body to the last wasting away. He himself lay on his couch, like one dying; his kinsmen lamented; his father, prostrate with grief, thought of the death of his only son and of his own most wretched bereavement; the countenance of the whole house was funereal rather than royal. But this cloud of sadness the foresight of Leptines the astrologer—or, as some relate, of Erasistratus the physician—dispelled: for, sitting beside Antiochus, when he noticed that at the entrance of Stratonice he was suffused with a blush and his breath quickened, and that as she went out he grew pale and presently recovered a more agitated panting, by a more careful observation he penetrated to the very truth: for, when Stratonice entered and again departed, by dissemblingly grasping the young man's arm, he discovered, by the now more lively, now more languid beating of the veins, of what disease the patient was sick, and at once disclosed it to Seleucus. He did not hesitate to yield to his son the wife most dear to himself, attributing to fortune the fact that he had fallen into love, but to his own modesty the fact that he had been prepared to conceal it even unto death. Let an old man, a king, a lover be set before our minds: now it will be plain how many and how difficult things the indulgence of a father's affection overcame.

7e.2. And Seleucus, indeed, yielded a wife; but Ariobarzanes yielded to his son the kingdom of Cappadocia, in the sight of Gnaeus Pompeius. When he had mounted Pompeius's tribunal and, invited by him, had sat in the curule chair, after he beheld his son holding, on the corner among the scribes, a place lower than his fortune, he could not endure to look upon him placed below himself, but at once descended from the chair and transferred the diadem to his head and began to exhort him to pass over to the place from which he himself had risen. Tears fell from the young man, his body shuddered, the diadem slipped down, nor could he advance whither he had been bidden; and—what almost exceeds the credit of truth—he who was laying down a kingdom was joyful, he to whom it was given was sad. Nor would so distinguished a contest have had any end, had not the authority of Pompeius supported the will of the father: for he both called the son king and ordered him to take the diadem and compelled him to sit in the curule chair.

8.pr. These fathers were of comic mildness, those of tragic harshness.

8.1. ON THE SEVERITY OF FATHERS TOWARD THEIR CHILDREN Lucius Brutus, equal in glory to Romulus—because the one founded the city, the other Roman liberty—holding the supreme command, ordered his own sons, who were bringing back the domination of Tarquinius that had been expelled by him, to be seized, and, before the tribunal, beaten with rods and bound to the stake, to be struck with the axe. He put off the father, that he might play the consul, and chose to live bereaved rather than to fail in public vengeance.

8.2. Emulating his example, Cassius condemned at home his son Spurius Cassius—who, as tribune of the plebs, had first carried an agrarian law and, by many other measures conducted in a popular manner, held the minds of men bound to himself by love of him—after he had laid down that office, having summoned the council of his kinsmen and friends, on the charge of aiming at kingship, and, after he had been scourged, ordered him to be put to death, and consecrated his property to Ceres.

8.3. But Titus Manlius Torquatus, on account of his many outstanding qualities of rare dignity most skilled also in the civil law and in the pontifical rites, in a like deed did not believe that he had need even of the counsel of his kinsmen: for, when Macedonia had laid complaints before the senate through envoys about his son Decimus Silanus, who had held that province, he asked of the senators that they should determine nothing about the matter before he himself had examined the cause of the Macedonians and of his son. Then, with the highest consent both of that most ample order and even of those who had come to complain, having undertaken the inquiry, he sat at home and alone gave his leisure to each side for two whole days, and on the third day, after the witnesses had been heard most fully and most diligently, he thus pronounced: "Since it has been proved to me that my son Silanus accepted moneys from the allies, I judge him unworthy both of the commonwealth and of my house, and I order him at once to depart from my sight." Stricken by so grim a sentence of his father, Silanus could not endure to look upon the light any longer and made away with himself by hanging the next night. Torquatus had now performed the parts of a severe and scrupulous judge; satisfaction had been made to the commonwealth; Macedonia had its revenge; the father's rigour could have been bent by so modest a death of his son: but he neither attended the obsequies of the young man and, when his funeral was being conducted at its very height, lent attentive ears to those wishing to consult him: for he saw that he was sitting in that hall in which the image of that imperious Torquatus, conspicuous for his severity, had been placed, and it occurred to a most prudent man that the likenesses of ancestors with their inscriptions are wont to be set in the front part of houses for this reason, that posterity should not only read of their virtues but also imitate them.

8.4. But Marcus Scaurus, the light and ornament of his fatherland, when at the river Athesis the Roman knights, routed by the onset of the Cimbri, having deserted the consul Catulus, were fearfully making for the city, sent to his own son, a partaker in their consternation, one who should tell him that he would more gladly meet the bones of him slain in the battle line than see him guilty of so disgraceful a flight: and so, if any remnant of shame at least survived in his breast, he would avoid the sight of his degenerate father: for by the recollection of his own youth he was reminded what kind of son ought either to be kept by Marcus Scaurus or spurned. On receiving this message the young man was compelled to use his sword more bravely against himself than he had used it against the enemy.

8.5. Nor with less spirit did Aulus Fulvius, a man of senatorial order, draw back his son as he was going into the battle line than Scaurus rebuked his as he was fleeing from the battle: for, when the youth, distinguished among his peers both in talent and in letters and in beauty, by perverse counsel had followed the friendship of Catiline and was rushing with rash impulse into his camp, he had him taken in mid-journey and afflicted him with the punishment of death, declaring beforehand that he had not begotten him for Catiline against his fatherland, but for his fatherland against Catiline. It was permitted, until the madness of the civil war should pass by, to keep him shut up and restrained: but that would be told as the work of a cautious father; this is recorded as the work of a severe one.

9.pr. But that the milder characters of fathers, now to be related, may temper this vehement and harsh severity by an admixture of their clemency, let pardon granted be joined to punishment exacted.

9.1. ON THE MODERATION OF PARENTS TOWARD SONS UNDER SUSPICION Lucius Gellius, having discharged all the offices up to the censorship, when he held all but proven the most grievous charges against his son—of debauchery committed with his stepmother and of parricide contemplated—did not nevertheless rush at once to vengeance, but, having admitted almost the whole senate to his council, after he had set forth his suspicions, gave the young man the power of defending himself, and, the cause having been most diligently examined, acquitted him both by the verdict of the council and even by his own sentence. But if, carried away by the impulse of anger, he had hastened to rage, he would have committed a crime rather than avenged one.

9.2. But of Quintus Hortensius, who in his time was the ornament of Roman eloquence, there was an admirable forbearance in the case of his son: for, although he held his impiety so suspect and his worthlessness so hateful that, intending to make Messala, his sister's son, his heir, while defending a man accused of bribery, he said to the judges that, if they condemned him, there would remain to him nothing but the kisses of his grandchildren, in whom he might find rest—by this sentiment, of course, which he even inserted into the published oration, placing his son among the torments of his soul rather than among his pleasures—yet, that he might not confound the order of nature, he left not his grandchildren but his son as heir, using his affections with moderation, because both while alive he rendered a true testimony to his character and when dead he rendered the due honour to his blood.

9.3. The same thing was done by Quintus Fulvius, a man of illustrious family and great dignity, but in a son somewhat more foul: for, when he had implored the aid of the senate, that, being suspected of parricide and on that account in hiding, he should be sought out by a triumvir, and the son had been seized by order of the senators, he not only did not brand him but even, when dying, wished him to be master of all his goods, appointing as his heir the one whom he had begotten, not the one whom he had found him to be by experience.

9.4. To the clement acts of great men I shall add the plan of an obscure father, of a new and unusual method. When he had learned that snares were being plaited for him by his son and could not bring himself to believe that his true blood had advanced to such a degree of crime, he took his wife aside and humbly begged her not to conceal it from him any further, whether she had substituted that young man or had conceived him by another. Then, persuaded by her assertion and her oath that he should suspect nothing of the kind, having led his son to a deserted place, he handed him the sword which he had brought hidden with him and offered his throat to be struck, affirming that he had need of neither poison nor brigand to accomplish the parricide. By this deed not gradually but with great force a right way of thinking took possession of the young man's breast, and at once, casting away the sword, he said: "Nay, you, father, live, and—if you so compliant will permit your son to make this prayer too—surpass me in this too. But only this I ask, that my love toward you be not the cheaper to you for this, that it springs from repentance." O solitude better than blood, and woods more peaceful than household gods, and iron sweeter than nourishment, and the benefit of death offered happier than of life given!

10.pr. Having commemorated fathers who bore the injuries of their children patiently, let us relate those who tolerated their deaths with an even mind.

10.1. ON PARENTS WHO BORE THE DEATH OF THEIR CHILDREN WITH A BRAVE SPIRIT Horatius Pulvillus, when on the Capitol, as pontifex, he was dedicating a temple to Jupiter Best and Greatest, and amid the pronouncement of the solemn words, holding the doorpost, had heard that his son was dead, neither removed his hand from the doorpost, lest he should interrupt the dedication of so great a temple, nor turned his countenance from public religion to private grief, lest he should seem to have played the part of a father rather than of a pontifex. A famous example, and yet no less illustrious is the one which follows.

10.2. Aemilius Paulus, the most illustrious representation now of a most fortunate, now of a most wretched father, of his four sons of remarkable beauty and outstanding disposition denied two to himself by the right of adoption, having transferred them into the Cornelian and Fabian clans; two fortune took from him. Of these, the one went before his father's triumph by his own death four days before it, the other, beheld in the triumphal chariot, expired three days after. And so he who had abounded even to the point of giving away his children was suddenly left destitute in bereavement. With what strength of spirit he bore this misfortune he left ambiguous to no one by adding this conclusion to the speech which he delivered before the people about the things done by him: "When, amid the greatest abundance of our good fortune, Quirites, I feared lest fortune should be contriving some evil, I prayed Jupiter Best and Greatest and Juno the Queen and Minerva that, if any adversity threatened the Roman people, it might be turned wholly upon my house. Wherefore it is well: for by granting my prayers they have so brought it about that you should grieve at my misfortune rather than that I should groan at yours."

10.3. With one more domestic example added even now, I shall permit my discourse to wander among the griefs of others. Quintus Marcius Rex, the colleague of the elder Cato in the consulship, lost a son of the highest dutifulness and great promise, and—what was no small addition to his calamity—an only son; and when he saw himself undermined and overthrown by his death, he so curbed his grief by the depth of his counsel that from the young man's pyre he at once sought the senate-house and convened the senate, which on that day he was obliged by law to hold. Had he not known how to bear his mourning bravely, he could not have divided the light of a single day between a calamitous father and a vigorous consul, with no part of his duty neglected on either side.

10e.1. Pericles, the chief of the Athenians, within the space of four days bereft of two marvellous young sons, in those very days both with his countenance retaining its former state and with his oratory in no part more broken delivered a public address. He even endured to wear his head crowned in the wonted manner, that he might detract nothing from the old rite on account of his domestic wound. Not without cause, then, did a spirit of so great strength rise to the surname of Olympian Jupiter.

10e.2. Xenophon, moreover, as far as concerns the Socratic school the nearest after Plato in the rank of happy and blessed eloquence, when he was performing a solemn sacrifice, learned that of his two sons the elder by birth, named Gryllus, had fallen in battle at Mantinea: nor on that account did he think the worship of the gods that he had begun should be omitted, but was content only to lay aside his garland. And having inquired about that very garland in what manner he had fallen, when he heard that he had perished fighting most bravely, he set it back upon his head, calling to witness the divinities to whom he was sacrificing that he felt greater pleasure from his son's valour than bitterness from his death. Another would have removed the victim, would have cast away the altar, would have scattered the incense bedewed with tears: the body of Xenophon stood unmoved in its religious office, and his mind remained steadfast in the counsel of prudence, and he judged it more grievous to succumb to grief than to the very disaster which had been announced.

10e.3. Nor should Anaxagoras be suppressed: for, on hearing of the death of his son, he said, "You announce to me nothing unexpected or new: for I knew that he, born from me, was mortal." Such utterances, imbued with the most useful precepts, virtue sends forth. And if anyone shall receive them effectively into his ears, he will not be ignorant that children are to be begotten in such a way that he remember that to them, by the nature of things, the law of both receiving breath and rendering it is appointed at one and the same moment of time; and that, as no one is wont to die who has not lived, so neither can anyone live who is not destined to die.