o no one who has not been actually slain with a sword while
performing the duties of his embassy. But I, O conscript fathers,
consider that this was the feeling of our ancestors, that they
considered that it was the cause of death, and not the manner of it,
which was a proper subject for inquiry. In fact, they thought fit that
a monument should be erected to any man whose death was caused by an
embassy, in order to tempt men in perilous wars to be the more bold
in undertaking the office of an ambassador. What we ought to do,
therefore, is, not to scrutinise the precedents afforded by our
ancestors, but to explain their intentions from which the precedents
themselves arose.

II. Lar Tolumnius, the king of Veii, slew four ambassadors of the
Roman people, at Fidenae, whose statues were standing in the rostra
till within my recollection. The honour was well deserved. For our
ancestors gave those men who had encountered death in the cause of the
republic an imperishable memory in exchange for this transitory life.
We see in the rostra the statue of Cnaeus Octavius, an illustrious and
great man, the first man who brought the consulship into that family,
which afterwards abounded in illustrious men. There was no one then
who envied him, because he was a new man; there was no one who did not
honour his virtue. But yet the embassy of Octavius was one in which
there was no suspicion of danger. For having been sent by the senate
to investigate the dispositions of kings and of free nations, and
especially to forbid the grandson of king Antiochus, the one who had
carried on war against our forefathers, to maintain fleets and to keep
elephants, he was slain at Laodicea, in the gymnasium, by a man of the
name of Leptines. On this a statue was given to him by our ancestors
as a recompense for his life, which might ennoble his progeny for many
years, and which is now the only memorial left of so illustrious a
family. But in his case, and in that of Tullus Cluvius,[43] and Lucius
Roseius, and Spurius Antius, and Caius Fulcinius, who were slain by
the king of Veii, it was not the blood that was shed at their death,
but the death itself which was encountered in the service of the
republic, which was the cause of their being thus honoured.

III. Therefore, O conscript fathers, if it had been chance which had
caused the death of Servius Sulpicius, I should sorrow indeed over
such a loss to the republic, but I should consider him deserving o