ou now
endeavour to evince your regard for her when degraded, disfranchised
from the rights of citizens, and become the slaves of the
Carthaginians. Shall you return by purchase to that degree which you
have forfeited by cowardice and neglect? You did not listen to
Sempronius, your countryman, when he bid you take arms and follow him;
but a little after you listened to Hannibal, when he ordered your arms
to be surrendered, and your camp betrayed. But why do I charge those
men with cowardice, when I might tax them with villany? They not only
refused to follow him who gave them good advice, but endeavoured to
oppose and hold him back, had not some men of the greatest bravery,
drawing their swords, removed the cowards. Publius Sempronius, I say,
was obliged to force his way through a band of his countrymen, before
he burst through the enemy's troops. Can our country regret such
citizens as these, whom if all the rest resembled, she would not have
one citizen of all those who fought at Cannae? Out of seven thousand
armed men, there were six hundred who had courage to force their way,
who returned to their country free, and in arms; nor did forty
thousand of the enemy successfully oppose them. How safe, think you,
would a passage have been for nearly two legions? Then you would have
had this day at Canusium, conscript fathers, twenty thousand bold and
faithful. But now how can these men be called faithful and good
citizens, (for they do not even call themselves brave,) except any man
suppose that they showed themselves such when they opposed those who
were desirous of forcing their way through the enemy? or, unless any
man can suppose, that they do not envy those men their safety and
glory acquired by valour, when the must know that their timidity and
cowardice were the cause of their ignominious servitude? Skulking in
their tents they preferred to wait for the light and the enemy
together, when they had an opportunity of sallying forth during the
silence of the night. But though they had not courage to sally forth
from the camp, had they courage to defend it strenuously? Having
endured a siege for several days and nights, did they protect their
rampart by their arms, and themselves by their rampart? At length,
having dared and suffered every extremity, every support of life being
gone, their strength exhausted with famine, and unable to hold their
arms, were they subdued by the necessities of nature rather than by
arms? At