reat number of the Germans?
You have, to be sure, yourselves seen them to be strong and tall, and
that frequently, since the Romans have them among their captives every
where; yet these Germans, who dwell in an immense country, who have
minds greater than their bodies, and a soul that despises death, and
who are in rage more fierce than wild beasts, have the Rhine for the
boundary of their enterprises, and are tamed by eight Roman legions.
Such of them as were taken captive became their servants; and the rest
of the entire nation were obliged to save themselves by flight. Do you
also, who depend on the walls of Jerusalem, consider what a wall the
Britons had; for the Romans sailed away to them, an subdued them while
they were encompassed by the ocean, and inhabited an island that is not
less than the [continent of this] habitable earth; and four legions are
a sufficient guard to so large all island And why should I speak much
more about this matter, while the Parthians, that most warlike body
of men, and lords of so many nations, and encompassed with such mighty
forces, send hostages to the Romans? whereby you may see, if you please,
even in Italy, the noblest nation of the East, under the notion of
peace, submitting to serve them. Now when almost all people under the
sun submit to the Roman arms, will you be the only people that make war
against them? and this without regarding the fate of the Carthaginians,
who, in the midst of their brags of the great Hannibal, and the nobility
of their Phoenician original, fell by the hand of Scipio. Nor indeed
have the Cyrenians, derived from the Lacedemonians, nor the Marmaridite,
a nation extended as far as the regions uninhabitable for want of
water, nor have the Syrtes, a place terrible to such as barely hear
it described, the Nasamons and Moors, and the immense multitude of the
Numidians, been able to put a stop to the Roman valor. And as for the
third part of the habitable earth, [Akica,] whose nations are so many
that it is not easy to number them, and which is bounded by the Atlantic
Sea and the pillars of Hercules, and feeds an innumerable multitude
of Ethiopians, as far as the Red Sea, these have the Romans subdued
entirely. And besides the annual fruits of the earth, which maintain
the multitude of the Romans for eight months in the year, this, over and
above, pays all sorts of tribute, and affords revenues suitable to
the necessities of the government. Nor do they, like y