s that the successors will come with more
moderate inclinations. But as for war, if it be once begun, it is not
easily laid down again, nor borne without calamities coming therewith.
However, as to the desire of recovering your liberty, it is unseasonable
to indulge it so late; whereas you ought to have labored earnestly in
old time that you might never have lost it; for the first experience of
slavery was hard to be endured, and the struggle that you might never
have been subject to it would have been just; but that slave who hath
been once brought into subjection, and then runs away, is rather a
refractory slave than a lover of liberty; for it was then the proper
time for doing all that was possible, that you might never have admitted
the Romans [into your city], when Pompey came first into the country.
But so it was, that our ancestors and their kings, who were in much
better circumstances than we are, both as to money, and strong bodies,
and [valiant] souls, did not bear the onset of a small body of the Roman
army. And yet you, who have now accustomed yourselves to obedience from
one generation to another, and who are so much inferior to those who
first submitted, in your circumstances will venture to oppose the entire
empire of the Romans. While those Athenians, who, in order to preserve
the liberty of Greece, did once set fire to their own city; who pursued
Xerxes, that proud prince, when he sailed upon the land, and walked upon
the sea, and could not be contained by the seas, but conducted such an
army as was too broad for Europe; and made him run away like a fugitive
in a single ship, and brake so great a part of Asia at the Lesser
Salamis; are yet at this time servants to the Romans; and those
injunctions which are sent from Italy become laws to the principal
governing city of Greece. Those Lacedemonians also who got the great
victories at Thermopylae and Platea, and had Agesilaus [for their
king], and searched every corner of Asia, are contented to admit the
same lords. Those Macedonians also, who still fancy what great men their
Philip and Alexander were, and see that the latter had promised them
the empire over the world, these bear so great a change, and pay their
obedience to those whom fortune hath advanced in their stead. Moreover,
ten thousand ether nations there are who had greater reason than we to
claim their entire liberty, and yet do submit. You are the only people
who think it a disgrace to be serva