more inclined to follow reason than fortune. But I fear your
youth and uninterrupted good fortune, both of which are apt to inspire
a degree of confidence ill comporting with pacific counsels. Rarely
does that man consider the uncertainty of events whom fortune hath
never deceived. What I was at Trasimenus and at Cannae that you are
this day. Invested with command when you had scarcely yet attained the
military age, tho all your enterprises were of the boldest
description, in no instance has fortune deserted you. Avenging the
death of your father and uncle, you have derived from the calamity of
your house the high honor of distinguished valor and filial duty. You
have recovered Spain, which had been lost, after driving thence four
Carthaginian armies. When elected Consul, tho all others wanted
courage to defend Italy, you crossed over into Africa, where, having
cut to pieces two armies, having at once captured and burned two camps
in the same hour, having made prisoner Syphax, a most powerful king,
and seized so many towns of his dominions and so many of ours, you
have dragged me from Italy, the possession of which I had firmly held
for now sixteen years....

"Formerly, in this same country, Marcus Atilius would have formed one
among the few instances of good fortune and valor, if, when
victorious, he had granted a peace to our fathers when they requested
it; but by not setting any bounds to his success, and not checking
good fortune, which was elating him, he fell with a degree of ignominy
proportioned to his elevation. It is, indeed, the right of him who
grants, and not of him who solicits it, to dictate the terms of peace;
but perhaps we may not be unworthy to impose upon ourselves the fine.
We do not refuse that all those possessions on account of which the
war was begun should be yours--Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, with all the
islands lying in any part of the sea, between Africa and Italy. Let us
Carthaginians, confined within the shores of Africa, behold you, since
such is the pleasure of the gods, extending your empire over foreign
nations, both by sea and land. I can not deny that you have reason to
suspect the Carthaginian faith, in consequence of their insincerity
lately in soliciting a peace and while awaiting the decision. The
sincerity with which a peace will be observed depends much, Scipio, on
the person by whom it is sought. Your Senate, as I hear, refused to
grant a peace, in some measure, because the depu