e furnish rowers? Let us
first execute the command ourselves. Let us, senators, bring into the
treasury to-morrow all our gold, silver, and coined brass, each
reserving rings for himself, his wife, and children, and a bulla for
his son; and he who has a wife or daughters, an ounce weight of gold
for each. Let those who have sat in a curule chair have the ornaments
of a horse, and a pound weight of silver, that they may have a
salt-cellar and a dish for the service of the gods. Let the rest of
us, senators, reserve for each father of a family, a pound weight only
of silver and five thousand coined _asses_. All the rest of our
gold, silver, and coined brass, let us immediately carry to the
triumviri for banking affairs, no decree of the senate having been
previously made; that our voluntary contributions, and our emulation
in assisting the state, may excite the minds, first, of the equestrian
order to emulate us, and after them of the rest of the community. This
is the only course which we, your consuls, after much conversation on
the subject, have been able to discover. Adopt it, then, and may the
gods prosper the measure. If the state is preserved, she can easily
secure the property of her individual members, but by betraying the
public interests you would in vain preserve your own." This
proposition was received with such entire approbation, that thanks
were spontaneously returned to the consuls. The senate was then
adjourned, when every one of the members brought his gold, silver, and
brass into the treasury, with such emulation excited, that they were
desirous that their names should appear among the first on the public
tables; so that neither the triumviri were sufficient for receiving
nor the notaries for entering them. The unanimity displayed by the
senate was imitated by the equestrian order, and that of the
equestrian order by the commons. Thus, without any edict, or coercion
of the magistrates, the state neither wanted rowers to make up the
numbers, nor money to pay them; and after every thing had been got in
readiness for the war, the consuls set out for their provinces.

37. Nor was there ever any period of the war, when both the
Carthaginians and the Romans, plunged alike in vicissitudes, were in a
state of more anxious suspense between hope and fear. For on the side
of the Romans, with respect to their provinces, their failure in Spain
on the one hand, and their successes in Sicily on the other, had
blende