tion inherent in my disposition, which young men may if they
please call cowardice and sloth, so long as we have the consolation
to reflect, that though hitherto the measures of others have always
appeared on the first view of them the more plausible, mine on
experience have proved the sounder. The other imputation is that of
jealousy and envy towards the daily increasing glory of this most
valiant consul. But if neither my past life and character, nor a
dictatorship, together with five consulships, and so much glory
acquired, both in peace and war, that I am more likely to loathe it
than desire more, exempt me from such a suspicion, let my age at least
acquit me. For what rivalry can there exist between myself and a man
who is not equal in years even to my son? When I was dictator, when
as yet in the possession of full vigour, and engaged in a series of
affairs of the utmost magnitude, no one heard me, either in the senate
or in the popular assembly, express any reluctance to have the command
equally shared between myself and the master of the horse, at the
time when he was maligning me; a proposition which no one ever heard
mention of before. I chose to bring it about by actions rather than
by words, that he who was placed on the same footing with me in the
judgment of others, should soon by his own confession declare me his
superior. Much less, after having passed through these honours, would
I propose to myself to enter the lists of competition and rivalry with
a man in the very bloom of youth. And that, forsooth, in order that
Africa, if it shall have been denied to him, may be assigned as a
province to me, who am now weary of life, and not merely of active
employments. I must live and die with that share of glory which I have
already acquired. I prevented Hannibal from conquering, in order
that he might even be conquered by you, whose powers are now in full
vigour.

41. "It is but fair, Publius Cornelius, that you should pardon me,
if I, who in my own case never preferred the honour of men to the
interest of the state, do not place even your fame before the public
good. Although, if there were either no war in Italy, or an enemy of
such a description that no glory could be acquired from conquering
him, the man who would retain you in Italy, though actuated by a
desire to promote the public good, might appear to wish to deprive
you of an opportunity of acquiring renown when he objected to your
removing the war. Bu