freedom, but whom you ought not to follow if they be
the advisers of slavery.

Lastly, (let me at last say one true word, one word worthy of
myself!)--if the inclinations of this order are governed by the nod of
the veterans, and if all our words and actions are to be referred to
their will, death is what we should wish for, which has always, in the
minds of Roman citizens, been preferable to slavery. All slavery is
miserable; but some may have been unavoidable. Do you think, then,
that there is never to be a beginning of our endeavours to recover
our freedom? Or, when we would not bear that fortune which was
unavoidable, and which seemed almost as if appointed by destiny, shalt
we tolerate the voluntary bondage? All Italy is burning with a desire
for freedom. The city cannot endure slavery any longer. We have given
this warlike attire and these arms to the Roman people much later than
they have been demanded of us by them.

X. We have, indeed, undertaken our present course of action with a
great and almost certain hope of liberty. But even if I allow that the
events of war are uncertain, and that the chances of Mars are common
to both sides, still it is worth while to fight for freedom at the
peril of one's life. For life does not consist wholly in breathing,
there is literally no life at all for one who is a slave. All nations
can endure slavery. Our state cannot. Nor is there any other reason
for this, except that those nations shrink from toil and pain, and
are willing to endure anything so long as they may be free from those
evils, but we have been trained and bred up by our forefathers in such
a manner, as to measure all our designs and all our actions by the
standard of dignity and virtue. The recovery of freedom is so splendid
a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.
But if immortality were to be the result of our avoidance of present
danger, still slavery would appear still more worthy of being avoided,
in proportion as it is of longer duration. But as all sorts of deaths
surround us on all sides night and day, it does not become a man,
and least of all a Roman, to hesitate to give up to his country that
breath which he owes to nature.

Men flock together from all quarters to extinguish a general
conflagration. The veterans were the first to follow the authority of
Caesar and to repel the attempts of Antonius, afterwards the Martial
legion checked his frenzy, the fourth legion cru