, the
gesticulation of the dancer, with all the tricks of their respective
arts that are displayed before the people by other artists. All these
considerations may be put on one side; all that we need consider is
this, the discourse of the orator and the reasons for the presence of
the audience. Wherefore, just as poets in this place shift the scene
to various other cities--take, for instance, the tragic poet who makes
his actor say

_Liber, that dwellest on these heights august
Of famed Cithaeron_

or the comic poet who says

_Plautus but asks you for a tiny space
Within the circuit vast of these fair walls,
Whither without the aid of architect
He may transport old Athens,--_

even so I beg your leave to shift my scene, not, however, to any
distant city overseas, but to the senate-house or public library of
Carthage. I ask you, therefore, if any of my utterances be worthy of
the senate-house, to imagine that you are listening to me within the
very walls of the senate-house; if my words reveal learning, I beg you
to regard them as though you were reading them in the public library.
Would that I could find words enough to do justice to the magnitude of
this assembly and did not falter just when I would be most eloquent.
But the old saying is true, that heaven never blesses any man with
unmixed and flawless prosperity; even in the keenest joys there is
ever some slight undertone of grief, some blend of gall and honey;
there is no rose without a thorn. I have often experienced the truth
of this, and never more than at the present moment. For the more I
realize how ready you are to praise me, the more exaggerated becomes
the awe in which I stand of you, and the greater my reluctance to
speak. I have spoken to strange audiences often, and with the utmost
fluency, but now that I am confronted with my own folk, I hesitate.
Strange to say, I am frightened by what should allure, curbed by what
should spur me on, and restrained by what should make me bold. There
is much that should give me courage in your presence. I have made my
home in your city which I knew well as a boy, and where my student
days were spent. You know my philosophic views, my voice is no
stranger to you, you have read my books and approved of them. My
birthplace is represented in the council of Africa, that is, in your
own assembly; my boyhood was spent with you, you were my teachers, it
was here that my philosophy found it