the bitter end with bodily labor for everything
that pleased them, by regarding their own things as belonging to others
but acquiring readily the possessions of their neighbors as their own,
while they saw happiness in nothing else than in doing what was required
of them and held nothing else to be ill fortune than resting inactive.
Accordingly, as a result of this policy those men, who had been at the
start very few and possessed at first a city than which none was more
diminutive, conquered the Latins, conquered the Sabines, mastered the
Etruscans, Volsci, Opici, Leucanians and Samnites, in one word
subjugated the whole land bounded by the Alps and repulsed all the alien
tribes that came against them.

[-38-] "The later Romans, likewise, and our own fathers imitated them,
not being satisfied with their temporary fortune nor content with what
they had inherited, and they regarded sloth as their sure destruction
but exertion as their certain safety. They feared that if their
treasures remained unaugmented they would be consumed and worn away by
age, and were ashamed after receiving so rich a heritage to make no
further additions: thus they performed greater and more numerous
exploits.

"Why should one name individually Sardinia, Sicily, Macedonia,
Illyricum, Greece, Ionic Asia, the Bithynians, Spaniards, Africans? I
tell you the Carthaginians would have given them plenty of money to stop
sailing against that city, and so would Philip and Perseus to stop
making campaigns against them; Antiochus would have given much, his
children and descendants would have given much to let them remain on
European soil. But those men in view of the glory and the greatness of
the empire did not choose to be ignobly idle or to enjoy their wealth in
confidence, nor did the elders of our own generation who even now are
still alive.

"They knew well that the same practices as acquire good things serve
also to preserve them: hence they made sure many of their original
belongings and acquired many new ones. What need is there here to
catalogue in detail Crete, Pontus, Cyprus, Asiatic Iberia, Farther
Albania, both Syrian nations, each of the two Armenias, the Arabians,
the Palestinians? We did not even know their names accurately in the old
days: yet now we lord it over some ourselves and others we have bestowed
upon various persons, insomuch that we have gained from them income and
powers and honors and alliances.

[-39-] "With such exampl