e gods avert, and which my mind
shrinks back with alarm from mentioning,--but what has happened may
happen again,--) what I say, if Hannibal, having gained a victory,
should advance to the city? Shall we then at length send for you, our
consul, out of Africa, as we formerly sent for Quintus Fulvius from
Capua? What shall we say when we consider that in Africa also both
parties will be liable to the chances of war? Let your own house, your
father and your uncle, slain together with their armies within the
space of thirty days, after that, having spent several years in the
performance of the most important services, both by sea and land, they
had inspired foreign nations with the highest reverence for the name
of the Roman people and your family, be a warning to you. The day
would fail me were I disposed to enumerate the kings and generals
who have brought the most signal calamities upon themselves and their
armies by rashly passing into the territories of their enemies. The
Athenians, a state distinguished for prudence, leaving a war at home,
sent a great fleet into Sicily at the instance of a youth equally
enterprising and illustrious; but by one naval battle they reduced
their flourishing republic to a state of humiliation from which she
could never recover.

42. "But I am adducing foreign and too remote examples. That same
Africa, and Marcus Atilius, who was a signal example of both
extremes of fortune, may form a warning to us. Without doubt, Publius
Cornelius, when you shall have a view of Africa from the sea, the
reduction of your province of Spain will appear to you to have been a
mere matter of sport and pastime. For what similarity is there between
them? After sailing along the coast of Italy and Gaul to Emporiae
without any enemy to oppose you, you brought your fleet to land at
a city of our allies. There landing your soldiers, you marched them
through countries entirely secure from danger to Tarraco, to join the
allies and friends of the Roman people. After that, from Tarraco you
marched through places garrisoned by Roman troops. On the banks of the
Iberus were the armies of your father and your uncle, rendered still
more furious after the loss of their generals, even by the very
calamity they had suffered. The general, indeed, Lucius Marcius, had
been irregularly constituted and chosen for the time by the suffrages
of the soldiers; but had he been adorned with noble birth and the
regular gradation of preferm