28.28
"Though no crime is dictated by rational
motives, I should still like to know what was in your mind, what was your
intention, so far as such wickedness admitted of any. Years ago a legion
which was sent to garrison Regium murdered the principal men of the place
and kept possession of that wealthy city for ten years. For this crime the
entire legion of 4000 men were beheaded at Rome in the Forum. But they
did not choose for their leader an Umbrian who was little more than a
camp-follower, an Atrius whose very name is an evil omen. They followed
D. Vibellius, a military tribune. Nor did they join hands with Pyrrhus, or with
the Samnites and Lucanians, the enemies of Rome, but you communicated
your plans to Mandonius and Indibilis and prepared to join them in arms.
They were content to do as the Campanians did when they wrested Capua
from the Tuscans, its old inhabitants, or as the Mamertines did when they
seized Messana in Sicily; they intended to make Regium their future home
without any idea of attacking Rome or the allies of Rome. Did you intend to
make Sucro your permanent abode? If, after subjugating Spain, I had gone
away and left you here you would have rightly complained to gods and men
that you had not returned to your wives and children. But you may have
banished from your minds all thought of them, as you have in the case of
your country and in my own case. I want to trace the course which your
criminal project would have taken, though stopping short of the extreme of
madness. As long as I was alive and retained intact the army with which in
one day I captured New Carthage and defeated and routed four Carthaginian
armies, would you really have wrested the province of Spain from the hands
of Rome, you, a force of some 8000 men, every one of you of less account
at all events than the Albius and Atrius whom you made your masters?
"I put aside and ignore my own honour and reputation, and assume
that I was in no way injured by your too easily crediting the story of my
death. But what then? Supposing I had died, would the commonwealth have
died with me, would the sovereignty of Rome have shared my fate? No,
Jupiter Optimus Maximus would never have allowed a City built for eternity,
built under the auspices and sanction of the gods, to be as short-lived as this
fragile mortal body of mine. C. Flaminius, Aemilius Paulus, Sempronius
Gracchus, Postumius Albinus, M. Marcellus, T. Quinctius Crispinus, Cnaeus
Fulvius, and my own relations, the two Scipios, all of them distinguished
generals, have been carried off in this single war, and yet Rome lives on and
will live on though a thousand more should perish through sickness or the
sword. Would then the republic have been interred in my solitary grave?
Why even you yourselves, after the defeat and death of my father and my
uncle, chose Septimus Marcius to lead you against the Carthaginians, flushed
as they were with their recent victory. I am speaking as though Spain would
have been left without a general; but would not the sovereignty of the empire
have been amply vindicated by M. Silanus, who came into the province
invested with the same power and authority as I myself with my brother
Lucius and C. Laelius as his lieutenants? Can any comparison be made
between their army and you, between their rank and experience and those of
the men you have chosen, between the cause for which they are fighting and
the one which you have taken up? And if you were superior to them all
would you bear arms in company with the Carthaginians against your
country, against your fellow-citizens? What injury have they done to you?"
