spect beyond the ready credence of my death. What! if I were
dead, was the state to expire with me? was the empire of the Roman
people to fall with me? Jupiter, most good and great, would not have
permitted that the existence of the city, built under the auspices and
sanction of the gods to last for ever, should terminate with that of
this frail and perishable body. The Roman people have survived those
many and distinguished generals who were all cut off in one war;
Flaminius, Paulus, Gracchus, Posthumius Albinus, Marcus Marcellus,
Titus Quinctius Crispinus, Cneius Fulvius, my kinsmen the Scipios;
and will survive a thousand others who may perish, some by the sword,
others by disease; and would the Roman state have been buried with my
single corpse? You yourselves, here in Spain, when your two generals,
my father and my uncle, fell, chose Septimus Marcius as your general
to oppose the Carthaginians, exulting on account of their recent
victory. And thus I speak, on the supposition that Spain would have
been without a leader. Would Marcus Silanus, who was sent into the
province with the same power and the same command as myself, would
Lucius Scipio my brother, and Caius Laelius, lieutenant-generals, have
been wanting to avenge the majesty of the empire? Could the armies,
the generals themselves, their dignity or their cause, be compared
with one another? And even had you got the better of all these, would
you bear arms in conjunction with the Carthaginians against your
country, against your countrymen? Would you wish that Africa should
rule Italy, and Carthage the city of Rome? If so, for what offence on
the part of your country?

29. "An unjust sentence of condemnation, and a miserable and
undeserved banishment, formerly induced Coriolanus to go and fight
against his country; he was restrained, however, by private duty from
public parricide. What grief, what resentment instigated you? Was the
delay of your pay for a few days, during the illness of your general,
a reason of sufficient weight for you to declare war against your
country? to revolt from the Roman people and join the Ilergetians?
to leave no obligation, divine or human, unviolated? Without doubt,
soldiers, you were mad; nor was the disease which seized my frame more
violent than that with which your minds were affected. I shrink with
horror from the relation of what men believed, what they hoped and
wished. Let oblivion cover all these things if possible; if