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fixed refolution, to use my best endeavours, that you be not disappointed in me, and that their indirect defigns against me may be defeated.

I have, from my youth, been familiar with toils and with dangers. I was faithful to your intereft, my countrymen, when I ferved you for no reward but that of honour. It is not my design to betray you, now that you have conferred upon me a place of profit. You have committed to my conduct the war against Jugurtha. The Patricians are offended at this. But, where would be the wifdom of giving fuch a command to one of their honourable body? a perfon of illuftrious birth, of ancient family, of innummerable ftatues, but of no experience! What fervice would his long line of dead ancestors, or his multitude of motionless ftatues, do his country in the day of battle? What could fuch a general do, but, in his trepidation and inexperience, have recourse to some inferiour commander for direction in difficulties to which he was not himfelf equal? Thus, your Patrician general would in fact have a general over him; fo that the acting commander would still be a Plebeian. So true is this, my countrymen, that I have, myself, known those who have been chofen confuls, begin then to read the hiftory of their own country, of which, till that time, they were totally ignorant; that is, they first obtained the employment, and then bethought themfelves of the qualifications neceffary for the proper difcharge of it.

I fubmit to your judgment, Romans, on which fide the advantage lies, when a comparison is made between Patrician haughtiness and Plebeian experience. The very actions, which they have only read, I have partly feen, and partly myfelf atchieved. What they know by reading, I know by action. They are pleased to flight my mean birth: I defpife their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me; want of perfonal worth against them. But are not all men of the fame fpecies? What can make a difference between one man and another, but the endowments of the mind? For my part, I fhall always look upon the braveft man as the nobleft man. Suppofe it were enquired of the fathers of fuch Patricians as Albinus and Beftia, whether,

whether, if they had their choice, they would defire fons of their character, or of mine: what would they answer, but that they should with the worthieft to be their fons? If the Patricians have reafon to defpife me, let them likewife defpife their ancestors, whole mobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me? let them envy, likewife, my labours, my abftinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But thofe worthlefs men lead fuch a life of inactivity, as if they despised any honours you can beftow; whilft they afpire to honours, as if they had deferved them by the most industrious virtue. They lay claim to the rewards of activity, for their having enjoyed the pleasures of luxury. Yet none can be more lavish than they are in praise of their ancestors. And they imagine they honour themselves by celebrating their forefathers; whereas they do the very contrary: for, as much as their anceftors were diftinguished for their virtues, fo much are they difgraced by their vices. The glory of ancestors cafts a light, indeed, upon their pofterity; but it only ferves to fhow what the defcendants are. It alike exhibits to public view their degeneracy and their worth. I own I cannot boast of the deeds of my forefathers; but I hope I may anfwer the cavils of the Patricians by standing up in defence of what I have myself done.

Obferve now, my countrymen, the injuftice of the Patricians. They arrogate to themfelves honours on account of the exploits done by their forefathers, whilst they will not allow me the due praife for performing the very fame fort of actions in my own perfon. He has no ftatues, they cry, of his family. He can trace no venerable line of ancestors.-What then? Is it matter of more praife to difgrace one's illuftrious ancestors, than to become illuftrious by one's own good behaviour? What if I can fhow no ftatues of my family? I can fhow the ftandards, the armour, and the trappings, which I have myself taken from the vanquished; I can fhow the fcars of thofe wounds, which I have received by facing the enemies of my country. Thefe are my ftatues. These are the honours I boaft of. Not left me by inheritance as theirs: but earned by toil, by abftinence,

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by valour; amidst clouds of duft and feas of blood; fcenes of action, where thofe effeminate Patricians, who endeavour by indirect means to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to fhow their faces.

Vr. Speech of Publius Scipio to the Roman Army before the Battle of the Ticin.

WERE yon, Soldiers, the fame army which I had with me in Gaul, I might well forbear faying any. thing to you at this time: for what occafion could there be to ule exhortation to a cavalry that had so signally vanquished the fquadrons of the enemy upon the Rhone; or to legions, by whom that fame enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did in effect confefs themselves conquered? But as thefe troops, having been enrolled for Spain, are there with my brother Cneius, making war under my aufpices (as was the will of the fenate and people of Rome), I, that you might have a conful for your captain against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have freely offered myself for this war. You, then, have a new general, and I a new army. On this account, a few words from me to you will be neither improper nor unfeasonable.

That you may not be unapprised of what fort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them, they are the very fame, whom, in a former war, you vanquished both by land and fea; the fame from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been thefe twenty years your tributaries. You will not, I prefume, march against these men with only that courage with which you are wont to face other enemies; but with a certain anger and indignation, such as you would feel if you faw your flaves on a fudden rife up in arms against you. Conquered and enflaved, it is not boldness, but neceffity, that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that thofe who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the lofs of two thirds of their horfe and foot in the paffage of the Alps.

But you have heard, perhaps, that, though they are few in number, they are men of ftout hearts and robust bodies; heroes of fuch ftrength and vigour as nothing

is able to refift.-Mere effigies! nay, fhadows of men! wretches, emaciated with hunger, and benumbed with cold! bruifed and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons broken, and their horfes weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry, and fuch. the infantry, with which you are going to contend; not enemies, but the fragments of enemies. There is nothing which I more apprehend, than that it will be thought Hannibal was vanquished by the Alps before we had any conflict with him. But, perhaps, it was fitting it fhould be fo'; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods themselves, without man's help, fhould begin the war, and bring it to a near conclufion; and that we, who, next to the gods, have been injured and offended, fhould happily finifh what they have begun.

I need not be in any fear that you should fufpect mne of faying these things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different sentiments. What hindered me from going into Spain? That was my province, where I fhould have had the lefs dreaded Afdrubal, not Hannibal, to deal with. But hearing, as I paffed along the coaft of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, fent the horfe forward, and pitched my camp upon the Rhone. A part of my cavalry encountered, and defeated that of the enemy. My infantry not being able to overtake theirs, which fled before us, I returned to my fleet; and, with all the expedition I could use in fo long a voyage by fea and land, am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps. Was it, then, my inclination to avoid a conteft with this tremendous Hannibal? and have I met with him only by accident and unawares? or am I come on purpose to challenge him to the combat? I would gladly try, whether the earth, within thefe twenty years, has brought forth a new kind of Cartha ginians; or whether they be the fame fort of men who fought at the gates, and whom at Eryx, you fuffered to redeem themselves at eighteen denarii per head:· whether this Hannibal, for labours and journeys, be, as he would be thought, the rival of Hercules; or whether he be, what his father left him, a tributary, a vaffal, a flave of the Roman people. Did not the confcioufnefs

fcioufnefs of his wicked deed at Saguntum torment him and make him defperate, he would have fome regard, if not to his conquered country, yet furely to his own family, to his father's memory, to the treaty written with Amilcar's own hand. We might have tarved him in Eryx; we might have paffed into Africa with our victo rious fleet, and, in a few days, have deftroyed Car thage. At their humble fupplication, we pardoned them; we releafed them, when they were clofely shut up without a poffibility of efcaping; we made peace with them when they were conquered. When they were diftreffed by the African war, we confidered them, we treated them, as a people under our protection. And what is the return they make us for all thefe favours! Under the conduct of a hair-brained young man, they come hither to overturn our state, and lay waste our country. I could with, indeed, that it were not fo; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our own glory, and not our prefervation. But the conteft at prefent, is not for the poffeffion of Sicily and Sardinia, but of Italy itself nor is there behind us another army, which, if we fhould not prove the conquerors, may make head against our victorious enemies. There are no more Alps for them to pafs, which might give us leifure to raife new forces. No, Soldiers; here you must make your ftand, as if you were just now before the walls of Rome. Let every one reflect, that he is now to defend, not his own perfon only, but his wife, his children, his helpless infants. Yet, let not private confiderations alone poffefs our minds: let us remember that the eyes of the fenate and people of Rome are upon us; and that, as our force and courage hall now prove, fuch will be the fortune of that city and of the Roman empire.

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VII. Speech of Hannibal to the Carthaginian Army on the fame Occafion.

I KNOW not, Soldiers, whether you or your prifoners be encompaffed by fortune with the stricter bonds and neceffities. Two feas inclofe you on the right and left; ot a fhip to fly to for efcaping. Before you is the Po, a river broader and more rapid than the Rhone:

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