in their own possession, and have reduced it into a tributary
province under their axes and rods. You imagine, perhaps, that in the
same manner as you hold an assembly at Naupactus, according to your
own laws, under magistrates created by yourselves, at liberty to
choose allies and enemies, and to have peace or war at your own
option, so the assembly of the states of Sicily is summoned, to
Syracuse, or Messana, or Lilybaeum. No, a Roman praetor presides at
the meeting; summoned by his command they assemble; they behold him,
attended by his lictors seated on a lofty throne, issuing his haughty
edicts. His rods are ready for their backs, his axes for their necks,
and every year they are allotted a different master. Neither ought
they nor can they, wonder at this, when they see all the cities of
Italy bending under the same yoke,--Rhegium, Tarentum Capua, not to
mention those in their own neighbourhood, out of the ruins of which
their city of Rome grew into power. Capua indeed subsists, the grave
and monument of the Campanian people, that entire people having been
either cut off or driven into banishment; the mutilated carcass of a
city, without senate, without commons, without magistrates; a sort of
prodigy, the leaving which to be inhabited, showed more cruelty than
if it had been utterly destroyed. If foreigners who are separated from
us to a greater distance by their language, manners, and laws, than by
the distance by sea and land, are allowed to get footing here, it is
madness to hope that any thing will continue in its present state.
Does the sovereignty of Philip seem in any degree incompatible with
your freedom, who, at a time when he was justly incensed against you,
demanded nothing more of you than peace; and at present requires no
more than the observance of the peace which he agreed to? Accustom
foreign legions to these countries, and receive the yoke; too late,
and in vain, will you look for Philip as an ally, when you shall have
the Roman as a master. Trifling causes occasionally unite and disunite
the Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Macedonians, men speaking the same
language. With foreigners, with barbarians, all Greeks have, and ever
will have, eternal war: because they are enemies by nature, which is
always the same, and not from causes which change with the times. My
discourse shall conclude with the same argument with which it began.
Three years since, the same persons, assembled in this same place,
determi