ortals
endures.

"This being so, no one of you at this juncture should have an eye to
what is privately pleasant and safe rather than to what is suitable and
beneficial for the whole body of Romans. For besides many other
considerations that might naturally arise, reflect that we who are so
many and of such rank (members of the senate and knights) have come here
accompanied by a great mass of soldiers and with money in abundance not
to be idle or careless, but for the purpose of managing rightly the
affairs of our subjects, preserving in safety the property of those
bound by treaty, repelling any who undertake to do them wrong, and
increasing our own possessions. If we have not come with this in mind,
why in the world did we take the field at all instead of staying at home
with some occupation or other and on our private domains? Surely it were
better not to have undertaken the campaign than when assigned to it to
throw it over. If, however, some of us are here because compelled by the
laws to do what our country ordains, and the greater number voluntarily
on account of the honors and rewards that come from wars, how could we
either decently or without sin be false at once to the hopes of the men
that sent us forth and to our own? Not one person could grow so
prosperous as a private citizen as not to be ruined with the
commonwealth, if it fell. But if the republic succeeds, it lifts all
fortunes and each one individually.

[-37-] "I am not saying this with reference to you, my comrades and
friends who are here: you are not in general ignorant of the facts, that
you should need to learn them, nor do you assume an attitude of contempt
toward them, that you should require exhortation. I am saying it because
I have ascertained that there are some of the soldiers who themselves
are talking to the effect that the war we have taken up is none of our
business, and are stirring up the rest to sedition. My purpose is that
you yourselves may as a result of my words show a more ardent zeal for
your country and teach them all they should know. They would be apt to
receive greater benefit in hearing it from you privately and often than
in learning it but once from my lips. Tell them, then, that it was not
by staying at home or shirking campaigns or avoiding wars or pursuing
idleness that our ancestors made the State so great, but it was by
bringing their minds to venture readily everything that they ought and
by working eagerly to