pleaded the cause of the
treaty, amidst deep silence on account of his authority, and not from
the approbation of the audience. He said: that he had admonished and
forewarned them by the gods, the arbiters and witnesses of treaties,
that they should not send the son of Hamilcar to the army; that the
manes, that the offspring of that man could not rest in peace, nor
ever, while any one of the Barcine name and blood survived, would the
Roman treaties continue undisturbed. "You, supplying as it were fuel
to the flame, have sent to your armies a youth burning with the desire
of sovereign power, and seeing but one road to his object, if by
exciting war after war, he may live surrounded by arms and legions.
You have therefore fostered this fire, in which you now burn. Your
armies invest Saguntum, whence they are forbidden by the treaty: ere
long the Roman legions will invest Carthage, under the guidance of
those gods through whose aid they revenged in the former war the
infraction of the treaty. Are you unacquainted with the enemy, or with
yourselves, or with the fortune of either nation? Your good general
refused to admit into his camp ambassadors coming from allies and in
behalf of allies, and set at nought the law of nations. They, however,
after being there repulsed, where not even the ambassadors of enemies
are prohibited admittance, come to you: they require restitution
according to the treaty: let not guilt attach to the state, they
demand to have delivered up to them the author of the transgression,
the person who is chargeable with this offence. The more gently they
proceed,--the slower they are to begin, the more unrelentingly, I
fear, when they have once commenced, will they indulge resentment. Set
before your eyes the islands Aegates and Eryx, all that for
twenty-four years ye have suffered by land and sea. Nor was this boy
the leader, but his father Hamilcar himself, a second Mars, as these
people would have it: but we had not refrained from Tarentum, that is,
from Italy, according to the treaty; as now we do not refrain from
Saguntum. The gods and men have, therefore, prevailed over us; and as
to that about which there was a dispute in words, whether of the two
nations had infringed the treaty, the issue of the war, like an
equitable judge, hath awarded the victory to the party on whose side
justice stood. It is against Carthage that Hannibal is now moving his
vineae and towers: it is the wall of Carthage that he