quished the squadrons of the enemy upon the Rhone; or to legions, by whom that same enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did in effect confess themselves conquered?

2. But, as these troops having been enrolled for Spain, are there with my brother Cneus, making war under my auspices (as was the will of the senate and people of Rome) I, that you might have a consul for your captain against Hannibal and the Carthagenians, 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 unseasonable.

3. That you may not be unapprised of what sort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them; they are the very same whom in a former war you vanquished both by land and sea; the same from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been these twenty years your tributaries.

4. You will not I presume 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 saw your slaves on a sudden rise up against you.

5. Conquered and enslaved, it is not boldness but necessity that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that those who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the loss of two-thirds of their horse and foot in passing the Alps.

6. But you have heard, perhaps, that though they are few in number, they are men of stout hearts, and robust bodies; heroes of such strength and vigour as nothing is able to resist. Mere effigies! nay, shadows of men! wretches emaciated with hunger and benumbed with cold! bruised and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons broken and their horses weak and foundred! Such are the cavalry, and such the infantry, with which you are going to contend; not enemies but the fragments of enemies.

7. 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.

8. But perhaps it was fitting it should be so; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods themselves without man's help, should

begin the war, and bring it to near a conclusion; and that we, who, next to the gods, have been injured and offended, should happily finish what they have begun.

9. I need not be in any fear that you should suspect me of saying these things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different sentiments. What hindered me from going to Spain? That was my province, where, I should have had the less dreadful Asdrubel, not Hannibal, to deal with. 10. But, hearing, as I past along the coast of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, sent the horse 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 so long a voyage by sea and land, am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps.

11. Was it, then, my inclination to avoid a contest 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?

12. I would gladly try whether the earth, within these twenty years has brought forth a new kind of Carthagenians; or whether they be the same sort of men who fought at the Agates, and whom at Eryx you suffered to redeem themselves at eighteen denarii a 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 vassal, a slave of the Roman people.

13. Did not the consciousness of his wicked deed at Saguntum torment him and make him desperate, he would have some regard, if not to his conquered country, yet surely to his own family, to his father's memory, to the treaty written with Amilcar's own hand. We might have starved him in Eryx; we might have passed into Africa with our victorious fleet; and in a few days have destroyed Carthage. Attheir humble supplications we pardoned them, we released them when they were closely shut up without a possibility of escaping; we made peace with them when they were conquered.

14. When they were distressed by the African war, we considered them, we treated them as a people under our protection: And what is the return they make us for all these

favours? Under the conduct of a hair-brained young man, they come hither to overturn our state, and lay waste our country.

15. I could wish indeed that it were not so; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our glory and not our preservation. But the contest at present is not for the possession of Sicily and Sardinia, but of Italy itself; nor is there behind us another army, which if we should not prove conquerors, may make head against our victorious enemies.

16. There are no more Alps for them to pass, which mght give us leisure to raise new forces: No, soldiers; here you must take your stand, as if you were just now before the walls of Rome. Let every one reflect, that he is now to defend not his own person only, but his wife, his children, his helpless infants.

17. Yet let not private considerations alone possess our minds; let us remember that the eyes of the senate and people of Rome are upon us; and that as our force and courage shall now prove, such will be the fortune of that city and of the Roman empire.

LXIV. CAIUS MARIUS to the Romans; shewing the absurdity of their hesitating to confer on him the rank of general, merely on account of his extraction.

1.

T is but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates for places of power and trust, before and after obtaining them.

2. They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, kumility and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice.

3. It is, undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times.

4. To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money; to oblige those to serve, whom it may be delicate to offend; to conduct, at the same time, a complicated variety of operations; to concert measures at home, answerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end in spite of opposition from the envious,

the factious, and the disaffected-to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought.

5. But besides the disadvantages which are common to me with all others in eminent stations, my case is, in this respect peculiarly hard; that, whereas a commander of Patrician rank, if he is guilty of a neglect, or breach of duty, has his great connections, the antiquity of his family, the important services of his ancestors, and the multitudes he has, by power, engaged in his interest, to screen him from condign punishment-my whole safety depends upon myself, which renders it the more indispensably necessary for me to take care that my conduct be clear and unexceptionable. 6. Besides, I am well aware, my countrymen, that the eye of the public is upon me; and that, though the impartial, who prefer the real advantage of the commonwealth to all other considerations, favour my pretensions, the Patricians want nothing so much as an occasion against me.

7. It is therefore my fixed resolution to use my best endeavours, that you be not disappointed in me, and that their indirect designs against me may be defeated.

8. I have from my youth, been familiar with toils and with dangers. I was faithful to your interest, my countrymen, when I served 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.

9. You have committed to my conduct the war against Jugurtha. The Patricians are offended at this. But where would be the wisdom of giving such a command to one of their honourable body? A person of illustrious birth, of ancient family, of innumerable statues, but-of no experience.

10. What service would his long line of dead ancestors, or his multitude of motionless statues, do his country in the day of battle? What could such a general do, but in his trepidation and inexperience, have recourse to some inferior commander for direction in difficulties to which he was not himself equal? Thus your Patrician general would in fact have a general over him; so that the acting commander would still be a Plebian.

11. So true is this, my countrymen, that I have myself known those who have been chosen consuls, begin then to read the history of their own country, of which till that time they were totally ignorant; that is, they first obtained

the employment, and then bethought themselves of the qualifications necessary for the proper discharge of it.

12. I submit to your judgment, Romans, on which side the advantage lies when a comparison is made between Patrician haughtiness and Plebian experience. The very actions which they have only read, I have partly seen and partly myself achieved. What they know by reading, I know by action. They are pleased to slight my mean birth; I despise their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me: want of personal worth against them.

13. But are not men all of the same species? What can make a difference between one man and another, but the endowments of the mind? For my part I shall always look upon the bravest man as the noblest man. Suppose it were inquired of the fathers of such Patricians as Albinus and Bestia, whether if they had their choice, they would desire sons of their character, or of mine? What would they answer, but that they should wish the worthiest to be their sons: If the Patricians have reason to despise me, let them likewise despise their ancestors, whose nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me, let them envy likewise my labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them..

14. But those worthless men lead such a life of inactivity, as if they despised any honours you can bestow: whilst they aspire to honours, as if they had deserved 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 ancestors were distinguished for their virtues, so much are they disgraced by their vices.

15. The glory of ancestors casts a light, indeed, upon their posterity; but it only serves to show what the descendants 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 answer the cavils of the Patricians by standing up in defence of what I have myself done.

16. Observe now, my countrymen, the injustice of the Pa