and throughout the city fear exists? [-29-] In
this way, when men begin a seditious career and seek ever to repay
violence with violence and inflict vengeance without care for propriety,
without care for human limitations, but according to their desires and
the power that arms give them, there necessarily arises in each such
case a kind of circle of ills, and alternate requitals of outrages take
place. The fortunate party abounds in insolence and sets no limits to
the advantage it may take, and the party that is crushed, if it does not
perish immediately, rages at the disaster and is eager to take vengeance
on the oppressor, until it sate its wrath. Then the remainder of the
multitude, even if it has not been previously involved in the
transactions, now through pity of the beaten and envy of the victorious
side, cooeperates with the former, fearing that it may suffer the same
evils as the downtrodden element and hoping that it may win the same
success as the force temporarily in the ascendant. Thus the portion of
the citizens that is not concerned is brought into the dispute and one
class takes the evil up against another, through pretence of avenging
the side which is for the moment at a disadvantage, as if they were
repelling a regular, everyday danger; and individually they free
themselves from it, but they ruin the community in every way. [-30-] Do
you not see how much time we have lost in fighting one another, how many
great evils we have endured meanwhile, and, what is worse than that,
inflicted? And who could count the vast mass of money of which we have
stripped our allies and robbed the gods, which furthermore we have
contributed ourselves from what we did not possess, and then expended it
against one another? Or who could number the mass of men that have been
lost, not only of ordinary persons (that is beyond computation) but of
knights and senators, each one of whom was able in foreign wars to
preserve the whole city by his life and death? How many Curtii, how many
Decii, Fabii, Gracchi, Marcelli, Scipiones have been killed? Not, by
Jupiter, to repel Samnites or Latins or Spaniards or Carthaginians, but
only to perish themselves in the end. And for those under arms who died,
no matter how deep sorrow one might feel for them, there is less reason
to lament. They entered the battles as volunteers, if it is proper to
call volunteers men compelled by fear, and they met even if an unjust at
least a brave death, in