vigators if the sailors should turn a deaf ear to their
pilots? It is by a natural law both necessary and salutary that the
principle of ruling and again that of being ruled have been placed among
men, and without them it is impossible for anything to continue to exist
for ever so short a time. Now it belongs to him who is stationed over
another both to think out and to command the requisite course, and to
him who is made subservient to obey without questioning and to put the
order into action. By this the sensible element is distinguished from
the senseless and the understanding element from the ignorant in all
matters.

[-34-] "Since these things are so I would never under compulsion assent
to these brawlers nor give them my permission perforce. Why am I sprung
from Aeneas and Iulus, why have I been praetor, why consul, for what end
have I led some of you out from home and gathered others later, for what
end have I received and held the authority of a proconsul now for so
long a time, if I am to be a slave to any one of you and conquered by
any one of you here in Italy and near to Rome,--I, to whom you owe your
subjection of the Gauls and your conquest of Britain? What should I fear
or dread? That some one of you will kill me? Nay, but if you all had
this mind, I would voluntarily choose to die rather than to give up the
dignity of my position as leader or to abandon the attitude of mind
befitting the head of an enterprise. For a far greater danger than the
unjust death of one man confronts the city, if the soldiers shall become
accustomed to issue orders to their generals and to take the justice of
the law into their own hands.[-35-] No one of them, however, has so much
as made this threat: if he had, I am sure he would have been slain
forthwith by the rest of you. But they are withdrawing from the campaign
on the pretence of being wearied and are laying down their arms because
(they say) they are worn out, and certainly if they do not obtain my
consent to this wish of theirs, they will leave their ranks and go over
to Pompey: some of them make this perfectly evident. Who would not be
glad to be deprived of such men, and who would not pray that such
soldiers might belong to his rival, seeing that they are not content
with what is given and are not obedient to orders, but that simulating
old age in the midst of youth and in strength simulating weakness they
claim the right to lord it over their rulers and to tyrannize