5.6
"Though it might not affect
this present war, it would, you may depend upon it,
be of the utmost importance to our military training
that our soldiers should be habituated not only to
enjoy a victory when they have won one, but also,
when a campaign progresses slowly, to put up with
its tediousness and await the fulfilment of their
hopes though deferred. If a war has not been
finished in the summer they must learn to go through
the winter, and not, like birds of passage, look out
for roofs to shelter them the moment autumn comes.
The passion and delight of hunting carries men
through frost and snow to the forests and the
mountains. Pray tell me, shall we not bring to the
exigencies of war the same powers of endurance which
are generally called out by sport or pleasure? Are
we to suppose that the bodies of our soldiers are so
effeminate and their spirits so enfeebled that they
cannot hold out in camp or stay away from their
homes for a single winter? Are we to believe that
like those engaged in naval warfare, who have to
watch the seasons and catch the favourable weather,
so these men cannot endure times of heat and cold?
They would indeed blush if any one laid this to
their charge, and would stoutly maintain that both
in mind and body they were capable of manly
endurance, and could go through a campaign in winter
as well as in summer. They would tell you that they
had not commissioned their tribunes to act as
protectors of the effeminate and the indolent, nor
was it in cool shade or under sheltering roofs that
their ancestors had instituted this very tribunitian
power. The valour of your soldiers, the dignity of
Rome, demand that we should not limit our view to
Veii and this present war, but seek for reputation
in time to come in respect of other wars and amongst
all other nations.
"Do you imagine that the opinion men form of
us in this crisis is a matter of slight importance?
Is it a matter of indifference whether our
neighbours regard Rome in such a light that when any
city has sustained her first momentary attack it has
nothing more to fear from her, or whether on the
other hand, the terror of our name is such that no
weariness of a protracted siege, no severity of
winter, can dislodge a Roman army from any city
which it has once invested, that it knows no close
to a war but victory, and that it conducts its
campaigns by perseverance as much as by dash?
Perseverance is necessary in every kind of military
operation, but especially in the conduct of sieges,
for the majority of cities are impregnable, owing to
the strength of their fortifications and their
position, and time itself conquers them with hunger
and thirst, and captures them as it will capture
Veii unless the tribunes of the plebs extend their
protection to the enemy and the Veientines find in
Rome the support which they are vainly seeking in
Etruria. Can anything happen to the Veientines more
in accordance with their wishes than that the City
of Rome should be filled with sedition and the
contagion of it spread to the camp? But amongst the
enemy there is actually so much respect for law and
order that they have not been goaded into revolution
either by weariness of the siege or even aversion to
absolute monarchy, nor have they shown exasperation
at the refusal of succours by Etruria. The man who
advocates sedition will be put to death on the spot,
and no one will be allowed to say the things which
are uttered amongst you with impunity. With us the
man who deserts his standard or abandons his post is
liable to be cudgelled to death, but those who urge
the men to abandon the standards and desert from the
camp are listened to, not by one or two only; they
have the whole army for an audience. To such an
extent have you habituated yourselves to listen
calmly to whatever a tribune of the plebs may say,
even if it means the betrayal of your country and
the destruction of the republic. Captivated by the
attraction which that office has for you, you allow
all sorts of mischief to lurk under its shadow. The
one thing left for them is to bring forward in the
camp, before the soldiers, the same arguments which
they have so loudly urged here, and so corrupt the
army that they will not allow it to obey its
commanders. For evidently liberty in Rome simply
means that the soldiers cease to feel any reverence
for either the senate, or the magistrates, or the
laws, or the traditions of their ancestors, or the
institutions of their fathers, or military
discipline."