The Histories
Historiae
Headnote
The Histories (Historiae) was Sallust’s last and most ambitious work, a year-by-year account in five books of Roman affairs from 78 BC, the year of Sulla’s death, into the late 70s. Unlike the two monographs it does not survive whole: the continuous narrative is lost, and what remains is a wreckage of fragments preserved by later grammarians and anthologists — single sentences quoted for a rare word, a paragraph saved as a model of style. What this edition can offer, therefore, is not the work but its great set pieces: the four speeches and two letters that were copied out nearly entire because antiquity prized them as rhetoric, and which alone among the contents of the Histories come down to us as self-contained wholes.
These six pieces map the post-Sullan decade and its discontents. The speech of Lepidus (78 BC) is the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus rousing the people against the dead dictator’s settlement; the speech of Philippus answers it in the Senate, demanding that Lepidus’s revolt be crushed by force. The speech of Cotta (75 BC) is a beleaguered consul offering his own life to a people embittered by war and dearth; the letter of Pompey (around 74 BC) is an angry dispatch from the Spanish front, the young general warning the Senate that his unpaid army will march on Italy if it is not supplied. The speech of Macer (73 BC) is a tribune’s call to the commons to reclaim the tribunician power Sulla had gutted. Last and most famous is the letter of Mithridates to the Parthian king Arsaces, a king’s manifesto against Rome that reads the rise of the empire from the outside, as a history of treachery and limitless greed.
Each piece is individuated rhetoric in a distinct voice — Lepidus’s incendiary populism, Philippus’s clenched optimate scorn, Cotta’s near-suicidal pathos, Pompey’s blunt soldier’s grievance, Macer’s grinding insistence on a single demand, Mithridates’ grand and bitter anatomy of Roman conquest — and the translation keeps them apart rather than flattening them to one Senate-floor tone. Because the connective narrative is gone, each is rendered here as the freestanding unit it has become; this headnote and the glossary carry the historical context that the lost surrounding books once supplied. The Latin follows the Perseus digital edition (phi0631.phi003), which preserves the conventional fragment order and a number of corrupt or lacunose readings; the project’s translator’s log records the points where a disputed text affected the rendering.
Your mercy and uprightness, citizens — the very qualities for which you stand greatest and most renowned among all other nations — are what most make me afraid in the face of the tyranny of Lucius Sulla: afraid that, by giving too little credit in others to what you yourselves count monstrous, you may be caught off your guard — above all since for him every hope rests in crime and treachery, and he thinks himself safe no otherwise than by being too vile and too abominable for your fear, so that, once you are in his grip, your misery may strip from you all care for liberty — or that, if you do take thought, you may be held fast in warding off your perils rather than in avenging them. As for his satellites — men of the greatest name, sprung from the noblest examples of their forefathers — I cannot wonder enough that they pay their own servitude as the price of lordship over you, and choose both, through wrong, rather than to live free under the best of rights: glorious offspring of the Bruti, the Aemilii, the Lutatii, begotten to tear down what their ancestors won by valor. For what was defended against Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Philip, and Antiochus, if not liberty, and a home of his own for each man, and that we should obey nothing save the laws? All of which that sinister Romulus holds as though it were plunder seized from foreigners — not sated by the slaughter of so many armies, nor of the consuls and other leading men whom the chance of war had consumed, but the more cruel at the very moment when, for most men, success turns anger into pity. Nay, alone of all men since the memory of mankind began, he has framed punishments for the unborn, for whom wrong is made certain before life itself; and most depravedly, through the monstrousness of his crime, he has thus far been safe, while you, through fear of a heavier servitude, are frightened away from reclaiming your liberty.
’Clementia et probitas vostra, Quirites, quibus per ceteras gentis maxumi et clari estis, plurumum timoris mihi faciunt advorsum tyrannidem L. Sullae, ne, quae ipsi nefanda aestumatis, ea parum credundo de aliis circumveniamini — praesertim quom illi spes omnis in scelere atque perfidia sit neque se aliter tutum putet, quam si peior atque intestabilior metu vostro fuerit, quo captis libertatis curam miseria eximat — aut, si provideritis, in tutandis periculis magis quam ulciscundo teneamini. satellites quidem eius, homines maxumi nominis, optumis maiorum exemplis, nequeo satis mirari, qui dominationis in vos servitium suom mercedem dant et utrumque per iniuriam malunt quam optumo iure liberi agere: praeclara Brutorum atque Aemiliorum et Lutatiorum proles, geniti ad ea, quae maiores virtute peperere, subvortunda. nam quid a Pyrrho, Hannibale Philippoque et Antiocho defensum est aliud quam libertas et suae quoique sedes, neu quoi nisi legibus pareremus? quae cuncta scaevos iste Romulus quasi ab externis rapta tenet, non tot exercituum clade neque consulum et aliorum principum, quos fortuna belli con- sumpserat, satiatus, sed tum crudelior, quom plerosque secundae res in miserationem ex ira vortunt. quin solus omnium post memoriam humani generis supplicia in post futuros conposuit, quis prius iniuria quam vita certa esset, pravissumeque per sceleris immanitatem adhuc tutus fuit, dum vos metu gravioris serviti a repetunda libertate terremini.
We must act, citizens, and go to meet him, lest your spoils end up in his hands; there must be no putting it off, no help got ready by prayers — unless perhaps you hope that Sulla is by now weary or ashamed of his tyranny, and that he will give up more dangerously what he has seized by crime. But he has gone so far that he counts nothing glorious unless it is safe, and everything honorable that keeps him in mastery. And so that peace and quiet joined with liberty, which many honest men used to choose over toil with office, are gone; in this season one must serve or rule, one must feel fear or inspire it, citizens. For what is there beyond? What human thing survives, or what divine thing is undefiled? The Roman people, a little while ago the arbiter of nations, stripped of empire, of glory, of right, with no means even to keep itself going, despised, has not so much as a slave’s rations left. A great part of the allies and the Latins, to whom you granted citizenship for their many and outstanding deeds, are barred from it by one man; and a few satellites, as the wage of their crimes, have seized the ancestral homes of the harmless commons. The laws, the courts, the treasury, the provinces, kings — all in the hands of one man; in short, the license of death over citizens, and of their lives. At one and the same time you have seen human victims, and tombs stained with the blood of citizens. Is anything left to men but to break the wrong, or to die through valor? Since indeed nature has appointed one end for all, even for those fenced round with iron, and no one — daring nothing — awaits the last necessity except by a woman’s spirit.
Agundum atque obviam eundum est, Quirites, ne spolia vostra penes illos sint, non prolatandum neque votis paranda auxilia; nisi forte speratis taedium iam aut pudorem tyrannidis Sullae esse et eum per scelus occupata periculosius dimissurum. at ille eo processit, ut nihil gloriosum nisi tutum et omnia retinendae do- minationis honesta aestumet. itaque illa quies et otium cum libertate, quae multi probi potius quam laborem cum honoribus capessebant, nulla sunt; hac tempestate serviundum aut imperitandum, habendus metus est aut faciundus, Quirites. nam quid ultra? quaeve humana superant aut divina inpulluta sunt? populus Romanus, paulo ante gentium moderator, exutus imperio gloria iure, agitandi inops despectusque ne servilia quidem alimenta reliqua habet. sociorum et Lati magna vis civitate pro multis et egregiis factis a vobis data per unum prohibentur, et plebis innoxiae patrias sedes occupavere pauci satellites mercedem scelerum. leges iudicia aerarium provinciae reges penes unum, denique necis civium et vitae licentia. simul humanas hostias vidistis et sepulcra infecta sanguine civili. estne viris reliqui aliud quam solvere iniuriam aut mori per virtutem? quoniam quidem unum omnibus finem natura vel ferro saeptis statuit, neque quisquam extremam necessitatem nihil ausus nisi muliebri ingenio expectat.
But I am a firebrand, so Sulla says — I, who protest at the rewards of riot; and a lover of war — I, who demand back the rights of peace. No doubt because you will be safe and secure enough under his rule on no other terms than these: that Vettius the Picene and Cornelius the scribe squander the well-gotten goods of others; that you all approve the proscription of the innocent for their wealth, the torture of illustrious men, a city laid waste with flight and slaughter, the goods of wretched citizens sold or handed out as gifts like Cimbric plunder. But he throws in my face the holdings I got from the property of the proscribed. That, in fact, is the very greatest of his crimes — that neither I nor any man at all was safe enough if we acted rightly. And those things which I then bought out of dread, with the price paid, I am nonetheless restoring to their owners by right; and it is no plan of mine to suffer any plunder to be made of fellow citizens. Let it be enough, what we have endured, contracted in that madness — Roman armies joining hands against each other, and arms turned by foreigners upon ourselves. Let there be an end of all the crimes and outrages; of which Sulla is so far from repenting that he both counts them among his glories and, were it allowed him, would do them more greedily.
Verum ego seditiosus, uti Sulla ait, qui praemia turbarum queror, et bellum cupiens, qui iura pacis repeto; scilicet quia non aliter salvi satisque tuti in imperio eritis, nisi Vettius Picens et scriba Cornelius aliena bene par a ta prodegerint, nisi adprobaritis omnes proscriptionem innoxiorum ob divitias, cruciatus virorum illustrium, vastam urbem fuga et caedibus, bona civium miserorum quasi Cimbricam praedam venum aut dono datam. at obiectat mihi possessiones ex bonis proscriptorum. quod quidem scelerum illius vel maxumum est, non me neque quemquam omnium satis tutum fuisse, si recte faceremus. atque illa, quae tum formidine mercatus sum, pretio soluto iure, dominis tamen restituo, neque pati consilium est ullam ex civibus praedam esse. satis illa fuerint, quae rabie contracta toleravimus, manus conserentis inter se Romanos exercitus et arma ab externis in nosmet vorsa. scelerum et contumeliarum omnium finis sit; quorum adeo Sullam non paenitet, ut et facta in gloria numeret et, si liceat, avidius fecerit.
And by now it is not what you think of him, but how much you dare, that I fear — fear that, each waiting for some other man to lead, you may be seized beforehand, not by his resources, which are flimsy and rotten, but by your own apathy, which lets a man go plundering and seem as fortunate as he is bold. For apart from his befouled satellites, who wants things as they are, or who does not want everything changed except the victory? The soldiers, no doubt — by whose blood riches have been won for a Tarula and a Scirtus, the basest of slaves! Or those over whom, in the canvass for office, a Fufidius was preferred — a vile serving-girl, the disgrace of every honor! And so the conqueror’s army gives me my greatest confidence — an army that, for all its wounds and toils, has gained nothing but a tyrant. Unless perhaps they marched out to overthrow the tribunician power, founded by arms by their own forefathers, and to wrench away from themselves their own rights and courts — a fine wage indeed, when, banished into the marshes and woods, they came to see that the insult and the resentment were theirs, the rewards in the hands of a few. Why then does he stride on with so great a column and such spirits? Because success is wondrously a screen for vices; and once that is shaken, he will be as much despised as he is now feared — unless it be under the show of concord and peace, the names he has given to his crime and his parricide. He says there is no commonwealth and no end of war on any other terms than that the commons stay driven from their lands — the bitterest plunder of citizens — and that the right and the judgment over all things stay in his hands, which once belonged to the Roman people. If this is what you understand by peace and a settled state, then approve the greatest convulsions and ruin of the commonwealth, nod assent to the laws imposed on you, take your quiet with servitude, and hand down to posterity the precedent of a commonwealth circumvented at the price of its own blood. For myself, though through this supreme office enough had been won for the name of my ancestors, for my standing, and even for my protection, it was nonetheless no plan of mine to build a private power; and a perilous liberty seemed to me preferable to a quiet servitude. If you approve of that, then stand with me, citizens, and, with the gods’ good help, follow Marcus Aemilius, your consul, as leader and author, to the recovery of liberty.
Neque iam, quid existumetis de illo, sed quantum audeatis, vereor, ne alius alium principem expectantes ante capiamini, non opibus eius, quae futiles et corruptae sunt, sed vostra socordia, qua m raptum ire licet et, quam audeas, tam videri felicem. nam praeter satellites conmaculatos quis eadem volt aut quis non omnia mutata praeter victoriam? scilicet milites, quorum sanguine Tarulae Scirtoque, pessumis servorum, divitiae partae sunt! an quibus praelatus in magistratibus capiundis Fufidius, ancilla turpis, honorum omnium dehonestamentum? itaque maxumam mihi fiduciam parit victor exercitus, quoi per tot volnera et labores nihil praeter tyrannum quaesitum est. nisi forte tribuniciam potesta- tem evorsum profecti sunt, per arma conditam a maioribus suis, utique iura et iudicia sibimet extorquerent: egregia scilicet mercede, quom relegati in paludes et silvas contumeliam atque invidiam suam, praemia penes paucos intellegerent. quare igitur tanto agmine atque animis incedit? quia secundae res mire sunt vitiis obtentui, quibus labefactis, quam formidatus est, tam contemnetur; nisi forte specie concordiae et pacis, quae sceleri et parricidio suo nomina indidit. neque aliter rem publicam et belli finem ait, nisi maneat expulsa agris plebes, praeda civilis acerbissuma, ius iudiciumque omnium rerum penes se, quod populi Romani fuit. quae si vobis pax et conposita intelleguntur, maxuma turbamenta rei publicae atque exitia probate, adnuite legibus inpositis, accipite otium cum servitio et tradite exem- plum posteris ad rem publicam suimet sanguinis mercede circumveniundam. mihi quamquam per hoc summum imperium satis quaesitum erat nomini maiorum, dignitati atque etiam prae si dio, tamen non fuit consilium privatas opes facere, potiorque visa est periculosa libertas quieto servitio. quae si probatis, adeste, Quirites, et bene iuvantibus divis M. Aemilium consulem ducem et auctorem sequimini ad recipiundam libertatem.’
I could most wish, conscript fathers, that the commonwealth were at peace, or that in its perils it were defended by every readiest man, and, in short, that wicked undertakings were the ruin of those who counsel them. But on the contrary all has been thrown into confusion by sedition — and by the very men whose duty it was rather to check it; and at the last, what the worst and most foolish have decreed, the good and the wise must carry out. For war and arms, however hateful to you, must nonetheless be taken up, because they please Lepidus — unless perhaps a man has resolved to grant peace and yet endure war. Good gods, who still shelter this city though the care of it is let slip! Marcus Aemilius, the last of all the shameful, of whom it cannot be settled whether he is the worse or the more cowardly, has an army for crushing liberty, and has made himself, from a man despised, a man to be feared; while you, muttering and hanging back with words and the chants of seers, pray for peace rather than defend it, and do not see that by the softness of your decrees you strip the dignity from yourselves and the fear from him. And rightly so, since he won his consulship out of robbery, his province with an army out of sedition. What would he have taken for good deeds, on whose crimes you have bestowed such great rewards? But those, no doubt, who to the very last decreed embassies, peace, concord, and the rest of that kind, have earned his gratitude. On the contrary — despised and judged unworthy of the commonwealth, they are reckoned so much plunder, since in their fear they sought back the peace they had lost while they held it.
’Maxume vellem, patres conscripti, rem publicam quietam esse aut in periculis a promptissumo quoque defendi, denique prava incepta consultoribus noxae esse. sed contra seditionibus omnia turbata sunt et ab iis, quos prohibere magis decebat; postremo, quae pessumi et stultissumi decrevere, ea bonis et sapientibus faciunda sunt. nam bellum atque arma, quamquam vobis invisa, tamen, quia Lepido placent, sumunda sunt; nisi forte quoi pacem praestare et bellum pati consilium est. pro di boni, qui hanc urbem omissa cura adhuc tegitis, M. Aemilius, omnium flagitiosorum postremus, qui peior an ignavior sit deliberari non potest, exercitum opprimundae libertatis habet et se e contempto metuendum effecit; vos mussantes et retractantes verbis et vatum carminibus pacem optatis magis quam defenditis, neque intellegitis mollitia decretorum vobis dignitatem, illi metum detrahi. atque id iure, quoniam ex rapinis consulatum, ob seditionem provinciam cum exercitu adeptus est. quid ille ob bene facta cepisset, quoius sceleribus tanta praemia tribuistis? at scilicet eos, qui ad postremum usque legatos pacem concordiam et alia huiusce modi decreverunt, gratiam ab eo peperisse. immo despecti et indigni re publica habiti praedae loco aestumantur, quippe metu pacem repetentes, quo habitam amiserant.
For my part, from the very beginning, when I saw Etruria conspiring, the proscribed being summoned back, the commonwealth torn apart by largesses, I thought there was need of haste, and with a few others I followed the counsels of Catulus. But those men who exalted the good deeds of the Aemilian house, and said that by pardoning it had increased the greatness of the Roman people — who claimed that even then Lepidus had nowhere advanced, at the very time when he had taken up private arms to crush liberty — each seeking resources or clients for himself, corrupted the public policy. Yet then Lepidus was a brigand with his camp-drudges and a few cutthroats, not one of whom would not change his life for a day’s wage; now he is proconsul with command — not bought, but given by you — with legates still lawfully obeying him; and to him there flock together the most corrupt men of every order, blazing with want and with cravings, driven on by the consciousness of their crimes, men whose rest is in sedition, whose turmoil is in peace. These sow tumult out of tumult, war out of war — once the satellites of Saturninus, then of Sulpicius, then of Marius and Damasippus, and now of Lepidus. Besides, Etruria and all the embers of the war are roused, the Spains are stirred to arms, and Mithridates, at the flank of those revenues by which we are still kept going, watches for his day of war; in short, nothing is wanting for the overthrow of the empire but a fit commander. Wherefore I beg and beseech you, conscript fathers, that you take heed, and not suffer the license of crime to spread by contagion to the still-sound, as a madness does. For where rewards attend the bad, no man is easily good for nothing.
Equidem a principio, quom Etruriam coniurare, proscriptos accersi, largitionibus rem publicam lacerari videbam, maturandum putabam et Catuli consilia cum paucis secutus sum. ceterum illi, qui gentis Aemiliae bene facta extollebant et ignoscundo populi Romani magnitudinem auxisse, nusquam etiam tum Lepidum progressum aiebant, quom privata arma opprimundae libertatis cepisset, sibi quisque opes aut patrocinia quaerundo consilium publicum corruperunt. at tum erat Lepidus latro cum calonibus et paucis sicariis, quorum nemo diurna mercede vitam mutaverit; nunc est pro consule cum imperio, non empto sed dato a vobis, cum legatis adhuc iure parentibus, et ad eum concurrere homines omnium ordinum corruptissumi, flagrantes inopia et cupidinibus, scelerum conscientia exagitati, quibus quies in seditionibus, in pace turbae sunt. hi tumultum ex tumultu, bellum ex bello serunt, Saturnini olim, post Sulpici, dein Mari Damasippique, nunc Lepidi satellites. praeterea Etruria atque omnes reliquiae belli adrectae, Hispaniae armis sollicitae, Mithridates in latere vectigalium nostrorum, quibus adhuc sustentamur, diem bello circumspicit; quin praeter idoneum ducem nihil abest ad subvortundum imperium. quod ego vos oro atque obsecro, patres conscripti, ut animadvortatis ne u patiamini licentiam scelerum quasi rabiem ad integros contactu procedere. nam ubi malos praemia sequontur, haud facile quisquam gratuito bonis est.
Or do you wait until, with his army brought up again, he invades the city with sword and fire? Which is far nearer, from the state in which he is now moving, than civil arms are from peace and concord. These he took up against all things divine and human — not for his own wrong, nor for the wrong of those whose cause he pretends, but to overthrow the laws and liberty. For he is driven and torn by the craving of his spirit and the dread of his guilt, void of counsel, restless, trying this and that; he fears quiet, he hates war; he sees that he must go without luxury and license, and meanwhile he abuses your apathy. Nor have I counsel enough whether to call it fear or cowardice or madness in you, who seem each to pray only that such great evils, like a thunderbolt, may not touch himself — but not even to try to ward them off.
An expectatis, dum exercitu rursus admoto ferro atque flamma urbem invadat? quod multo propius est ab eo quo agitat statu, quam ex pace et concordia ad arma civilia. quae ille advorsum divina et humana omnia cepit, non pro sua aut quorum simulat iniuria, sed legum ac libertatis subvortundae. agitur enim ac laceratur animi cupidine et noxarum metu, expers consili, inquies, haec atque illa temptans; metuit otium, odit bellum; luxu atque licentia carendum videt atque interim abutitur vostra socordia. neque mihi satis consili est, metum an ignaviam an dementiam eam appellem, qui videmini i tanta mala quasi fulmen optare se quisque ne attingat, sed prohibere ne conari quidem.
And consider, I pray, how the nature of things has been turned about. Formerly public mischief was got up in secret, the defenses against it in the open, and so the good easily outstripped the bad; now peace and concord are disturbed in the open and defended in secret. Those whom that course pleases are under arms, you are in fear. What do you wait for? Unless perhaps you are ashamed or loath to act rightly. Or do the demands of Lepidus move your minds? He says it is his pleasure that each man’s own be restored to him — and he holds what is another’s; that the rights of war be annulled — while he himself compels by arms; that the citizenship be confirmed to those from whom he denies it was taken; that for concord’s sake the tribunician power be restored — from which all our discords were kindled. Worst of all men and most shameless, are the want and the grief of citizens your care — yours, who have nothing at home but what was got by arms or by wrong? You seek a second consulship, as though you had handed back the first; you seek concord by a war, by which the concord we had is shattered — traitor to us, faithless to those of yours, enemy of all good men. How is it you feel no shame before men or gods, whom you have outraged by breach of faith or by perjury! Since you are such a man, hold to your purpose and keep your arms, I urge you — and do not, by drawing sedition out, restless yourself, hold us fast in anxiety. Neither the provinces nor the laws nor the household gods will endure you as a citizen. Go on the way you have begun, that you may meet your deserts as soon as may be.
et quaeso considerate, quam convorsa rerum natura sit. antea malum publicum occulte, auxilia palam instrue- bantur, et eo boni malos facile anteibant; nunc pax et concordia disturbantur palam, defenduntur occulte. quibus illa placent, in armis sunt, vos in metu. quid expectatis? nisi forte pudet aut piget recte facere. an Lepidi mandata animos movere? qui placere ait sua quoique reddi et aliena tenet; belli iura rescindi, quom ipse armis cogat; civitatem confirmari, quibus ademptam negat; concordiae gratia tribuniciam potestatem restitui, ex qua omnes discordiae accensae. pessume omnium atque inpudentissume, tibine egestas civium et luctus curae sunt? quoi nihil est domi nisi armis partum aut per iniuriam. alterum consulatum petis, quasi primum reddideris, bello concordiam quaeris, quo parta disturbatur, nostri proditor, istis infidus, hostis omnium bonorum. ut te neque hominum neque deorum pudet, quos per fidem aut periurio violasti! qui quando talis es, maneas in sententia et retineas arma, te hortor, neu prolatandis seditioni- bus, inquies ipse, nos in sollicitudine attineas. neque te provinciae neque leges neque di penates civem patiuntur. perge qua coeptas, ut quam maturrume merita invenias.
But you, conscript fathers — how long, by hanging back, will you suffer the commonwealth to go unguarded, and meet arms with words? Levies have been held against you, monies wrung out of you from public and private purse, garrisons withdrawn and others set in their place; laws are dictated at his whim, while in the meantime you make ready embassies and decrees. The more greedily, by Hercules, you sue for peace, the fiercer the war will be, once he understands that he is upheld by your fear rather than by what is fair and good. For the man who says he hates turmoil and the slaughter of citizens, and on that pretext keeps Lepidus armed and you unarmed, advises that you should rather suffer what the conquered must endure, when you might be doing it yourselves. So to him he counsels peace from you, and to you, war from him. If this is your pleasure — if so great a numbness has weighed down your spirits that, forgetful of the crimes of Cinna, at whose return into the city the honor of this order perished, you will nonetheless surrender yourselves, your wives, and your children to Lepidus — then what need of decrees, what need of the help of Catulus? For he and the other good men care for the commonwealth in vain. Do as you please, get ready for yourselves the patronage of a Cethegus and the rest of the traitors, who long to set robbery and arson going again and to arm their hands once more against the household gods. But if liberty and the truer things please you more, then decree what is worthy of the name, and give heart to brave men. A new army is at hand, and besides, colonies of veteran soldiers, all the nobility, the best of commanders: fortune follows the better side. Soon those forces gathered by our apathy will melt away.
Vos autem, patres conscripti, quo usque cunctando rem publicam intutam patiemini et verbis arma temptabitis? dilectus advorsum vos habiti, pecuniae publice et privatim extortae, praesidia deducta atque inposita: ex lubidine leges imperantur, quom interim vos legatos et decreta paratis. quanto mehercule avidius pacem petieritis, tanto bellum acrius erit, quom intelleget se metu magis quam aequo et bono sustentatum. nam qui turbas et caedem civium odisse ait et ob id armato Lepido vos inermos retinet, quae victis toleranda sunt, ea quom facere possitis, patiamini potius censet. ita illi a vobis pacem, vobis ab illo bellum suadet. haec si placent, si tanta torpedo animos oppressit, ut obliti scelerum Cinnae, quoius in urbem reditu decus ordinis huius interiit, nihilo minus vos atque coniuges et liberos Lepido permissuri sitis, quid opus decretis, quid auxilio Catuli? quin is et alii boni rem publicam frustra curant. agite ut lubet, parate vobis Cethegi atque alia proditorum patrocinia, qui rapinas et incendia instaurare cupiunt et rursus advorsum deos penatis manus armare. sin libertas et vera magis placent, decernite digna nomine et augete ingenium viris fortibus. adest novos exercitus, ad hoc coloniae veterum militum, nobilitas omnis, duces optumi: fortuna meliores sequitur. iam illa, quae socordia nostra conlecta sunt, dilabentur.
Therefore my motion is this: since Marcus Lepidus is leading toward the city an army got up on his own private design, together with the worst men and the enemies of the commonwealth, against the authority of this order — that Appius Claudius the interrex, with Quintus Catulus the proconsul and the others who hold command, be a guard to the city and see to it that the commonwealth take no harm.
Quare ita censeo, quoniam M. Lepidus exercitum privato consilio paratum cum pessumis et hostibus rei publicae contra huius ordinis auctoritatem ad urbem ducit, uti Ap. Claudius interrex cum Q. Catulo pro consule et ceteris, quibus imperium est, urbi praesidio sint operamque dent, ne quid res publica detrimenti capiat.’
Citizens, many were the dangers I met at home and in the field, many the reverses; of these I bore some, and others I beat back, by the help of the gods and by my own valor. In all of them my spirit never failed the task, nor effort the resolves I had taken; ill fortune and good changed my means, not my nature. But in these present miseries, by contrast, all things, together with fortune, have deserted me. Besides, old age, grievous of itself, doubles my care — for me, in my wretchedness, my span already run, who am not allowed to hope even for an honorable death. For if I am a traitor to you, and, twice born here, hold cheap my household gods, my fatherland, and the highest command, what torture is enough for me alive, or what penalty dead? Why, by my crime I should have outdone all the punishments told of in the underworld.
’Quirites, multa mihi pericula domi militiaeque, multa advorsa fuere, quorum alia toleravi, partim reppuli deorum auxiliis et virtute mea; in quis omnibus numquam animus negotio defuit neque decretis labos; malae secundaeque res opes, non ingenium mihi mutabant. at contra in his miseriis cuncta me cum fortuna deseruere. praeterea senectus, per se gravis, curam duplicat, quoi misero acta iam aetate ne mortem quidem honestam sperare licet. nam si parricida vostri sum et bis genitus hic deos penatis meos patriamque et summum imperium vilia habeo, quis mihi vivo cruciatus satis est aut quae poena mortuo? quin omnia memorata apud inferos supplicia scelere meo vici.
From my earliest youth I have lived in your sight, as private man and in office; those who wanted my tongue, my counsel, my money, have had the use of them; nor did I ever exercise cunning eloquence or my talent for doing harm. Most greedy of private favor, I took on the greatest enmities for the commonwealth’s sake; overcome by them, along with it — when, lacking another’s help, I looked for more evils still — you, citizens, gave me back my fatherland and my household gods, with vast dignity besides. For such benefits I should scarcely seem grateful enough, were I to give up for each of you the one life I cannot. For life and death are the laws of nature; but to live without disgrace among your fellow citizens, your good name and your fortunes unharmed — that is what is given as a gift, and received.
A prima adulescentia in ore vostro privatus et in magistratibus egi: qui lingua, qui consilio meo, qui pecunia voluere, usi sunt; neque ego callidam facundiam neque ingenium ad male faciundum exercui: avidissumus privatae gratiae maxumas inimicitias pro re publica suscepi; quis victus cum illa simul, quom egens alienae opis plura mala expectarem, vos, Quirites, rursus mihi patriam deosque penatis cum ingenti dignitate dedistis. pro quibus beneficiis vix satis gratus videar, si singulis animam quam nequeo concesserim. nam vita et mors iura naturae sunt: ut sine dedecore cum civibus fama et fortunis integer agas, id dono datur atque accipitur.
You made us consuls, citizens, when the commonwealth was most beset at home and in war. For the commanders in Spain are demanding pay, soldiers, arms, grain — and the situation forces it, since through the defection of our allies and through Sertorius’s flight over the mountains they can neither contend in the field nor get what they need. Armies in Asia and Cilicia are being kept up because of the excessive power of Mithridates; Macedonia is full of enemies, and no less the seaboard of Italy and of the provinces; while in the meantime the revenues, small and made uncertain by the wars, scarcely meet a part of the costs: so that the fleet which guarded our supplies, smaller than before, is all we sail with. If these troubles have been brought on us by our own treachery or sloth, then act as anger prompts you, exact the penalty; but if it is our common fortune that has turned harsher, why do you set your hands to deeds unworthy of you, of us, and of the commonwealth?
Consules nos fecistis, Quirites, domi bellique impeditissuma re publica. namque imperatores Hispaniae stipendium milites arma frumentum poscunt, et id res cogit, quoniam defectione sociorum et Sertori per montis fuga neque manu certare possunt neque utilia parare. exer- citus in Asia Ciliciaque ob nimias opes Mithridatis aluntur, Macedonia plena hostium est nec minus Italiae marituma et provinciarum, quom interim vectigalia parva et bellis incerta vix partem sumptu u m sustinent: ita classe, quae commeatus tuebatur, minore quam antea navigamus. haec si dolo aut socordia nostra contracta sunt, agite, ut monet ira, supplicium sumite: sin fortuna communis asperior est, quare indigna vobis nobisque et re publica incipitis?
And for myself, to whose years death is nearer, I do not beg it off, if by it any trouble is taken from you; nor could I soon, by the natural failing of my body, make a more honorable close of life than for your safety. Here I stand, Gaius Cotta, your consul; I do what our forefathers often did in bitter wars: I vow and surrender myself for the commonwealth. To whom you are then to entrust it, look about you; for such an honor no good man will want, when he must render account for the fortune of sea and war that others have driven on, or else die shamefully. Only hold this in your minds: that I was not struck down for crime or for greed, but gave my life freely, as a gift, for the greatest of benefits. By yourselves, citizens, and by the glory of your forefathers, endure your adversities and take counsel for the commonwealth. Much care attends the supreme command, many vast toils, which you refuse in vain while you seek the opulence of peace, when all the provinces, kingdoms, seas, and lands are harsh or worn out with wars.
Atque ego, quoius aetati mors propior est, non deprecor, si quid ea vobis incommodi demitur; neque mox ingenio corporis honestius quam pro vostra salute finem vitae fecerim. adsum en C. Cotta consul, facio quod saepe maiores asperis bellis fecere: voveo dedoque me pro re publica. quam deinde quoi mandetis, circumspicite; nam talem honorem bonus nemo volet, quom fortunae et maris et belli ab aliis acti ratio reddunda aut turpiter moriundum sit. tantummodo in animis habetote non me ob scelus aut avaritiam caesum, sed volente m pro maxumis beneficiis animam dono dedisse. per vos, Quirites, et gloriam maiorum, tolerate advorsa et consulite rei publicae. multa cura summo imperio inest, multi ingentes labores, quos nequiquam abnuitis et pacis opu- lentiam quaeritis, quom omnes provinciae regna, maria terraeque aspera aut fessa bellis sint.’
If it had been against you, my fatherland, and the household gods that I undertook so many toils and dangers — as often as, from my earliest youth, under my leadership the most criminal enemies have been routed and your safety secured — you could have decreed nothing harsher against me in my absence than what you are doing even now, conscript fathers: me, who, flung against a most savage war before my years, with an army most deserving of you, you have, so far as in you lies, finished off by hunger, the most wretched of all deaths. Was it in this hope that the Roman people sent its children to war? Are these the rewards for our wounds, and for the blood so often shed for the commonwealth? Worn out with writing letters and sending envoys, I have used up all my resources and my private hopes, while in the meantime over three years you have given me barely one year’s costs. By the immortal gods, do you suppose that I can stand in the treasury’s stead, or keep an army without grain and pay?
’Si advorsus vos patriamque et deos penatis tot labores et pericula suscepissem, quotiens a prima adule- scentia ductu meo scelestissumi hostes fusi et vobis salus quaesita est, nihil amplius in absentem me statuissetis, quam adhuc agitis, patres conscripti, quem contra aetatem proiectum ad bellum saevissumum cum exercitu optume merito, quantum est in vobis, fame, miserruma omnium morte, confecistis. hacine spe populus Romanus liberos suos ad bellum misit? haec sunt praemia pro volneribus et totiens ob rem publicam fuso sanguine? fessus scribundo mittundoque legatos omnis opes et spes privatas meas consumpsi, quom interim a vobis per triennium vix annuos sumptus datus est. per deos inmortalis, utrum censetis me vicem aerari praestare an exercitum sine frumento et stipendio habere posse?
For my part I confess that I set out to this war with more zeal than calculation, seeing that, having received from you the mere name of command, in forty days I made ready an army and drove the enemy — already at the very neck of Italy — back from the Alps into Spain. Through those mountains I opened a route other than Hannibal’s, and more convenient for us. I recovered Gaul, the Pyrenees, Lacetania, the Indigetes; and the first onset of the victorious Sertorius I withstood with raw soldiers, and far fewer; and I spent the winter in camp among the most savage enemies, not in the towns, nor for my own popularity. Why then should I count over the battles, or the winter campaigns, the towns destroyed or recovered? Since the deeds count for more than words. The enemy’s camp taken at Sucro, the battle at the river Durius, and the enemy’s general Gaius Herennius, with the city of Valentia and an army, wiped out — these are bright enough for you. For which, O grateful fathers, you repay me with destitution and hunger.
Equidem fateor me ad hoc bellum maiore studio quam consilio profectum, quippe qui nomine modo imperi a vobis accepto diebus quadraginta exercitum paravi hostisque in cervicibus iam Italiae agentis ab Alpibus in Hispaniam submovi. per eas iter aliud atque Hannibal, nobis opportunius, patefeci. recepi Galliam, Pyrenaeum, Lacetaniam, Indigetis et primum impetum Sertori victoris novis militibus et multo paucioribus sustinui hiememque castris inter saevissumos hostis, non per oppida neque ex ambitione mea egi. quid deinde proelia aut expeditiones hibernas, oppida excisa aut recepta enumerem? quando res plus valet quam verba. castra hostium apud Sucronem capta et proelium apud flumen Durium et dux hostium C. Herennius cum urbe Valentia et exercitu deleti satis clara vobis sunt. pro quis, o grati patres, egestatem et famem redditis.
And so my army and the enemy’s are on equal terms: for pay is given to neither, and either, victorious, can come into Italy. Of this I warn you and beg you to take heed, and not to force me to look to my own needs in private. Nearer Spain, the part not held by the enemy, we or Sertorius have laid waste to utter ruin, save the coastal communities, which are, over and above, a cost and a burden to us. Gaul, in the past year, fed Metellus’s army with pay and grain, and now, its harvests failed, scarcely keeps itself alive. I have used up not my private estate only, but my credit as well. You are what is left: and unless you come to the rescue, then — against my will, and though I give you warning — the army will cross over from here into Italy, and with it the whole war of Spain.
Itaque meo et hostium exercitui par condicio est; namque stipendium neutri datur, victor uterque in Italiam venire potest. quod ego vos moneo quaesoque ut animadvortatis neu cogatis necessitatibus privatim mihi consulere. Hispaniam citeriorem, quae non ab hostibus tenetur, nos aut Sertorius ad internecionem vastavimus, praeter maritumas civitatis: ultro nobis sumptui onerique sunt. Gallia superiore anno Metelli exercitum stipendio frumentoque aluit et nunc malis fructibus ipsa vix agitat. ego non rem familiarem modo, verum etiam fidem consumpsi. reliqui vos estis: qui nisi subvenitis, invito et praedicente me exercitus hinc et cum eo omne bellum Hispaniae in Italiam transgredientur.’
If, citizens, you set too little store by the difference between the right your forefathers left you and this servitude got ready by Sulla, then I should have to argue at length, and to teach you for what wrongs, and how often, the commons in arms seceded from the fathers, and how they secured the tribunes of the plebs as the champions of all their rights. Now only this is left — to urge you, and to be the first to go by the road on which I judge liberty must be seized. Nor does it escape me with how great a power of the nobility I, alone and without resource, in the empty show of a magistracy, am beginning to thrust at their mastery, and how much more safely a faction of the guilty acts than the innocent acting alone. But over and above the good hope I have of you, which has overcome my fear, I have resolved that, in the struggle for liberty, even the worse outcome is, for a brave man, preferable to never having struggled at all.
’Si, Quirites, parum existumaretis, quid inter ius a maioribus relictum vobis et hoc a Sulla paratum servitium interesset, multis mihi disserundum fuit docendique, quas ob iniurias et quotiens a patribus armata plebes secessisset utique vindices paravisset omnis iuris sui tribunos plebis. nunc hortari modo reliquom est et ire primum via, qua capessundam arbitror libertatem. neque me praeterit, quantas opes nobilitatis solus inpotens inani specie magistratus pellere dominatione incipiam, quantoque tutius factio noxiorum agat quam soli innocentes. sed praeter spem bonam ex vobis, quae metum vicit, statui certaminis advorsa pro libertate potiora esse forti viro quam omnino non certavisse.
And yet all the others, created to defend your right, have turned their whole force and their commands against you, for favor or hope or reward, and think it better to do wrong for a wage than to do right for nothing. And so all have already gone over into the mastery of a few — men who, under the name of soldiering, have seized the treasury, the armies, kingdoms, provinces, and hold a citadel built out of your spoils; while in the meantime you, the multitude, like cattle, offer yourselves to single men to be owned and enjoyed, stripped of all that your forefathers left you — except that, by your own votes, you now appoint masters for yourselves, where once you appointed protectors. And so all have gone over to that side; but presently, if you recover your own, the most will come back to you. For few have the spirit to defend what pleases them; the rest belong to the stronger.
Quamquam omnes alii creati pro iure vostro vim cunctam et imperia sua gratia aut spe aut praemiis in vos convortere meliusque habent mercede delinquere quam gratis recte facere. itaque omnes concessere iam in pau- corum dominationem, qui per militare nomen aerarium exercitus regna provincias occupavere et arcem habent ex spoliis vostris, quom interim more pecorum vos multitudo singulis habendos fruendosque praebetis, exuti omnibus, quae maiores reliquere; nisi quia vobismet ipsi s per suffragia, ut praesides olim, nunc dominos destinatis. itaque concessere illuc omnes, at mox, si vo- stra receperitis, ad vos plerique. raris enim animus est ad ea, quae placent, defendunda, ceteri validiorum sunt.
Or do you hold it in doubt whether anything could stand in your way, if you press on with one mind — you, whose very slackness and sloth they have dreaded? Unless perhaps Gaius Cotta, a consul from the heart of the faction, restored certain rights to the tribunes of the plebs from some motive other than fear. And though Lucius Sicinius, the first who dared to speak of the tribunician power, was hemmed in while you muttered, still they feared the resentment against him before you grew sick of the wrong. And at that I cannot wonder enough, citizens; for you have come to understand that your hope was in vain. When Sulla, who had imposed that wicked servitude, was dead, you believed it the end of the evil: there arose a far more savage one, Catulus. An uprising broke out in the consulship of Brutus and Mamercus. Then Gaius Curio lorded it over a guiltless tribune, to his very destruction. With what spirit Lucullus went, in the past year, against Lucius Quinctius, you have seen. And now, at last, how great are the troubles being stirred up against me! All of which surely were undertaken to no purpose, if they meant to make an end of their mastery sooner than you of your servitude — above all when, in these civil wars, other things were spoken of, but on both sides the contest was over mastery over you. And so all else, from license or hatred or greed, blazed up for the moment; one thing alone has endured, sought by both sides and now being snatched away for the future: the tribunician power, the weapon our forefathers made ready for liberty. Of this I warn you and beg you to take heed, and not, by changing the names of things to suit your cowardice, to call servitude by the name of peace. And the enjoyment of that ease is now no longer open to you, if disgrace has overcome the true and the honorable — though it would have been, had you stayed quiet altogether. As it is, take heed: and unless you conquer, since every wrong is the safer for its weight, they will hold you the tighter.
An dubium habetis, num officere quid vobis uno animo pergentibus possit, quos languidos socordesque perti- muere? nisi forte C. Cotta, ex factione media consul, aliter quam metu iura quaedam tribunis plebis restituit. et quamquam L. Sicinius primus de potestate tribunicia loqui ausus mussantibus vobis circumventus erat, tamen prius illi invidiam metuere, quam vos iniuriae pertaesum est. quod ego nequeo satis mirari, Quirites; nam spem frustra fuisse intellexistis. Sulla mortuo, qui scelestum inposuerat servitium, finem mali credebatis: ortus est longe saevior Catulus. tumultus intercessit Bruto et Mamerco consulibus. dein C. Curio ad exitium usque insontis tribuni dominatus est. Lucullus superiore anno quantis animis ierit in L. Quintium, vidistis. quantae denique nunc mihi turbae concitantur! quae profecto in cassum agebantur, si prius quam vos serviundi finem, illi dominationis facturi erant: praesertim quom his civilibus armis dicta alia, sed certatum utrimque de dominatione in vobis sit. itaque cetera ex licentia aut odio aut avaritia in tempus arsere; permansit una res modo, quae utrimque quaesita est, et erepta in posterum: vis tribunicia, telum a maioribus libertati paratum. quod ego vos moneo quaesoque ut animadvortatis neu nomina rerum ad ignaviam mutantes otium pro servitio appelletis. quo iam ipso frui, si vera et honesta flagitium superaverit, non est condicio: fuisset, si omnino quiessetis. nunc animum advortere et, nisi viceritis, quoniam omnis iniuria gravitate tutior est, artius habebunt.
"What do you advise, then?" someone among you might put in. First of all, you must give up this way of yours — busy of tongue, cowardly of spirit, mindful of liberty no further than the place of assembly. Next — not to call you to those manly courses by which your forefathers won the tribunes of the plebs, a patrician magistracy, and votes set free from their patrician sponsors — since all the force, citizens, lies in you, and the orders you now endure for others’ sake you could surely carry out, or refuse to carry out, for your own — do you wait for Jupiter, or some other god, to be your counselor? Those great commands of the consuls and decrees of the fathers, it is you who, by executing them, make them binding, citizens; and of your own accord you hasten on the license that is swelled and helped along against you. Nor do I urge you to avenge your wrongs — rather to crave rest — nor to stir up discords, as they charge, but, wishing an end of them, I demand our rights back by the law of nations; and if they cling obstinately to them, it is not arms nor secession, but only this that I shall counsel — that you offer up your blood no longer. Let them wield and hold their commands in their own fashion, let them seek their triumphs, let them hunt down Mithridates, Sertorius, and the rest of the exiles, with their ancestral masks: let the danger and the toil be far from those who have no share in the fruit — unless perhaps your services are weighed out by that sudden grain law of theirs. By it, all the same, they have set the value of everyone’s liberty at five measures apiece — which, in truth, is no more than a prison ration. For just as among prisoners death is staved off by that scantness while their strength wastes away, so a thing so small does not release a man from the care of his household, and disappoints the slenderest hopes of every coward. Yet however ample it were, since it was held out as the price of servitude, what a torpor it would be to be so deceived, and, over and above, to owe gratitude for the wrong done to your own goods! Guard against the trick. For in no other way have they strength against you all, nor will they attempt it. And so at one and the same time they prepare their sops and put you off until the coming of Gnaeus Pompey — the very man whom, once they had feared him, they raised onto their own shoulders, and presently, the fear removed, they tear at. Nor are they ashamed — these who carry themselves as the champions of liberty — that so many men cannot, without one man, either dare to remit a wrong or have the power to defend their right. For myself, I am well enough assured that Pompey, a young man of such great glory, would rather be first man with your goodwill than the partner of their mastery, and would be foremost in restoring the tribunician power. But formerly, citizens, each citizen found his protection in the many, not all of you in one alone; nor could any mortal, by himself, give or take away such things.
Quid censes igitur? aliquis vostrum subiecerit. primum omnium omittundum morem hunc quem agitis inpigrae linguae, animi ignavi, non ultra contionis locum memores libertatis. deinde — ne vos ad virilia illa vocem, quo tribunos plebei modo, patricium magistratum, libera ab auctoribus patriciis suffragia maiores vostri paravere — quom vis omnis, Quirites, in vobis sit et quae iussa nunc pro aliis toleratis, pro vobis agere aut non agere certe possitis, Iovem aut alium quem deum consultorem expectatis? magna illa consulum imperia et patrum decreta vos exequendo rata efficitis, Quirites, ultroque licentiam in vos auctum atque adiutum properatis. neque ego vos ultum iniurias hortor, magis uti requiem cupiatis, neque discordias, uti illi criminantur, sed earum finem volens iure gentium res repeto et, si pertinaciter retinebunt, non arma neque secessionem, tantummodo ne amplius sanguinem vostrum praebeatis, censebo. gerant habeantque suo modo imperia, quaerant triumphos, Mithridatem, Sertorium et reliquias exulum persequantur cum imaginibus suis: absit periculum et labos, quibus nulla pars fructus est; nisi forte repentina ista frumentaria lege munia vostra pensantur. qua tamen quinis modiis libertatem omnium aestumavere, qui profecto non amplius possunt alimentis carceris. namque ut illis exiguitate mors prohibetur, senescunt vires, sic neque absolvi t cura familiari tam parva res et ignavi quoiusque tenuissumas spes frustratur. quae tamen quamvis ampla quoniam serviti pretium ostentaretur, quoius torpedinis erat decipi et vostrarum rerum ultro iniuria e gratiam debere? cavendus dolus est. namque alio modo neque valent in univorsos neque conabuntur. itaque simul conparant delenimenta et differunt vos in adventum Cn. Pompei, quem ipsum, ubi pertimuere, sublatum in cervices suas, mox dempto metu lacerant. neque eos pudet, vindices uti se ferunt libertatis, tot viros sine uno aut remittere iniuriam non audere aut ius non posse defendere. mihi quidem satis spectatum est Pompeium, tantae gloriae adulescentem, malle principem volentibus vobis esse quam illis dominationis socium auctoremque in primis fore tribuniciae potestatis. verum, Quirites, antea singuli cives in pluribus, non in uno cuncti praesidia habebatis. neque mortalium quisquam dare aut eripere talia unus poterat.
And so enough of words has been said; for it is not ignorance that blocks the matter. But some torpor or other has taken hold of you, by which you are moved neither by glory nor by disgrace, and you have bartered everything away for your present sloth, reckoning yourselves abundantly free — because, no doubt, your backs are spared and you are free to go here and there: the gifts of your rich masters. And these same things are not even the countryman’s: they are cut down amid the feuds of the powerful, and given away as presents to the magistrates going out to the provinces. So the fighting and the winning are for the few; the commons, whatever happens, count as the beaten — and more so day by day, if indeed they keep their mastery with greater care than you reclaim your liberty.
Itaque verborum satis dictum est, neque enim ignorantia res claudit. verum occupavit nescio qua e vos torpedo, qua non gloria movemini neque flagitio, cunctaque praesenti ignavia mutavistis, abunde libertatem rati, scilicet quia tergis abstinetur et huc ire licet atque illuc, munera ditium dominorum. atque haec eadem non sunt agrestibus, sed caeduntur inter potentium inimicitias donoque dantur in provincias magistratibus. ita pugnatur et vincitur paucis: plebes, quodcumque accidit, pro victis est et in dies magis erit, si quidem maiore cura dominationem illi retinuerint, quam vos repetiveritis libertatem.’
King Mithridates to King Arsaces, greeting. All those who, in their own prosperity, are entreated to join a war ought to consider whether it is open to them to keep the peace then, and next, whether what is asked of them is sufficiently righteous, safe, and glorious — or unbecoming. If it were yours to enjoy a perpetual peace, were the enemy not at hand and most criminal, and were no glorious fame to be yours if you crushed the Romans, I would not dare to seek your alliance, and would vainly hope to mix my evils with your goods. And yet the very things that seem able to hold you back — your anger at Tigranes over the recent war, and the slenderness of my own success — if you will weigh them truly, will be the strongest spur of all. For he, being beholden, will accept an alliance on whatever terms you please; while to me fortune, by stripping away much, has given the use of counseling well, and — what is to be wished by the flourishing — I, who am not at my strongest, offer an example by which you may the more rightly order your own affairs.
’Rex Mithridates regi Arsaci salutem. Omnes, qui secundis rebus suis ad belli societatem orantur, considerare debent, liceatne tum pacem agere, dein, quod quaesitur, satisne pium tutum gloriosum an indecorum sit. tibi si perpetua pace frui licet, nisi hostes opportuni et scelestissumi, egregia fama, si Romanos oppresseris, futura est, neque petere audeam societatem et frustra mala mea cum bonis tuis misceri sperem. atque ea, quae te morari posse videntur, ira in Tigranem recentis belli et meae res parum prosperae, si vera existumare voles, maxume hortabuntur. ille enim obnoxius qualem tu voles societatem accipiet; mihi fortuna multis rebus ereptis usum dedit bene suadendi et, quod florentibus optabile est, ego non validissumus praebeo exemplum, quo rectius tua conponas.
For the Romans have one cause, and that an old one, for warring on all nations, peoples, and kings: a deep-seated craving for empire and riches. By it they first took up war with Philip, king of the Macedonians, feigning friendship while they were hard pressed by the Carthaginians. When Antiochus came to his aid, they turned him aside by guile, with the cession of Asia; and presently, Philip broken, Antiochus was stripped of all the land this side of Taurus and of ten thousand talents. Then Perseus, Philip’s son, after many and varied struggles, received under their protection before the gods of Samothrace — these cunning men, these inventors of treachery, because by the pact they had granted him his life, killed by keeping sleep from him. Eumenes, whose friendship they parade so gloriously, they first betrayed to Antiochus as the price of peace; afterward, treating him as the warden of captured land, by exactions and insults they made of a king the most wretched of slaves, and, on a forged and impious will, led his son Aristonicus in their triumph after the manner of an enemy, because he had claimed his father’s kingdom; Asia was beset by them. Finally, on the death of Nicomedes, they plundered Bithynia, though there was beyond doubt a son, born of Nysa, whom he had named queen.
Namque Romanis cum nationibus populis regibus cunctis una et ea vetus causa bellandi est: cupido profunda imperi et divitiarum. qua primo cum rege Macedonum Philippo bellum sumpsere, dum a Carthaginiensibus premebantur, amicitiam simulantes. ei subvenientem Antiochum concessione Asiae per dolum avortere, ac mox fracto Philippo Antiochus omni cis Taurum agro et decem milibus talentorum spoliatus est. Persen deinde, Philippi filium, post multa et varia certamina apud Samothracas deos acceptum in fidem callidi et repertores perfidiae, quia pacto vitam dederant, insomniis occidere. Eumenem, quoius amicitiam gloriose ostentant, initio prodidere Antiocho pacis mercedem; post, habitum custodiae agri captivi, sumptibus et contumeliis ex rege miserrumum servorum effecere, simulatoque inpio testamento filium eius Aristonicum, quia patrium regnum petiverat, hostium more per triumphum duxere; Asia ab ipsis obsessa est. postremo Bithyniam Nicomede mortuo diripuere, quom filius Nysa, quam reginam appellaverat, genitus haud dubie esset.
For why should I name myself? — me, whom, though cut off on every side by kingdoms and tetrarchies from their empire, they provoked to war through Nicomedes, because the report was that I was rich and would be no slave; I, not unaware of their crime, having called to witness beforehand, of what was to come, the Cretans — the only free people of that age — and King Ptolemy. And I, avenging my wrongs, drove Nicomedes from Bithynia, recovered Asia, the spoil of King Antiochus, and lifted from Greece a heavy servitude. My undertakings the basest of slaves, Archelaus, hindered by betraying my army. And those whom cowardice or a crooked cunning kept from arms, that they might be safe through my toils, are paying the bitterest penalties: Ptolemy, by a bribe putting off his war from day to day; the Cretans, attacked already once, and destined to have no end of it but their destruction. For my part, when I understood that, owing to their own internal troubles, battles had been deferred to me rather than peace granted — Tigranes refusing me, who approves my words too late, you standing far off, all the rest beholden — I nonetheless began the war again, and routed Marcus Cotta, the Roman general, on land at Chalcedon, and stripped him by sea of a most beautiful fleet. At Cyzicus, while I lingered in the siege with a great army, grain failed me, none round about lending aid; at the same time winter shut me off from the sea. So when I tried, without force from the enemy, to fall back into my ancestral kingdom, I lost by shipwreck, off Parium and Heraclea, the best of my soldiers along with their fleets. Then, when I had restored my army at Cabira, and after various battles between me and Lucullus, want fell once more upon us both. He had behind him the kingdom of Ariobarzanes, untouched by war; I, with everything around laid waste, withdrew into Armenia. And the Romans, pursuing not me but their own habit of overthrowing every kingdom, because they kept my multitude from fighting on the narrow ground, now parade the rashness of Tigranes as a victory.
Nam quid ego me appellem? quem diiunctum undique regnis et tetrarchiis ab imperio eorum, quia fama erat divitem neque serviturum esse, per Nicomedem bello lacessiverunt, sceleris eorum haud ignarum et ea, quae accidere, testatum antea Cretensis, solos omnium liberos ea tempestate, et regem Ptolemaeum. atque ego ultus iniurias Nicomedem Bithynia expuli Asiamque, spolium regis Antiochi, recepi et Graeciae dempsi grave servitium. incepta mea postremus servorum Archelaus exercitu prodito impedivit. illique, quos ignavia aut prava calliditas, ut meis laboribus tuti essent, armis abstinuit, acerbissumas poenas solvunt, Ptolemaeus pretio in dies bellum prolatans, Cretenses inpugnati semel iam neque finem nisi excidio habitur i. equidem quom mihi ob ipsorum interna mala dilata proelia magis quam pacem datam intellegerem, abnuente Tigrane, qui mea dicta sero probat, te remoto procul, omnibus aliis obnoxiis, rursus tamen bellum coepi, Marcumque Cottam, Romanum du- cem, apud Calchedona terra fudi, mari exui classe pulcherruma. apud Cyzicum magno cum exercitu in obsidio moranti frumentum defuit, nullo circum adnitente; simul hiems mari prohibebat. ita sine vi hostium regredi co- natus in patrium regnum naufragiis apud Parium et Heracleam militum optumos cum classibus amisi. restituto deinde apud Caberam exercitu et variis inter me atque Lucullum proeliis inopia rursus ambos incessit. illi suberat regnum Ariobarzanis bello intactum, ego vastis circum omnibus locis in Armeniam concessi. secutique Romani non me, sed morem suom omnia regna subvortundi, quia multitudinem artis locis pugna prohibuere, inpru- dentiam Tigranis pro victoria ostentant.
Now consider, I pray: if we are crushed, do you think you will be the stronger to resist, or that there will be an end of the war? I know well that you have great resources of men, of arms, of gold; and for that very reason you are sought by us for alliance, by them for plunder. But the plan is this: with the kingdom of Tigranes whole, and with my soldiers, who know war, far from home, at small cost — and at the hazard of our bodies — to finish the war; since we can neither conquer nor be conquered without danger to you. Or do you not know that the Romans, after the Ocean made a limit for them as they pressed westward, turned their arms this way? that from the beginning they have held nothing but what they seized — home, wives, lands, empire? Once vagabonds without fatherland or parents, founded as a plague upon the whole earth; whom nothing human or divine holds back from dragging off and rooting out allies and friends, those set far off and those near, the helpless and the powerful, and from counting every kingdom not enslaved to them — and above all every kingdom — an enemy? For few men want liberty, the greater part want just masters; we are suspected as rivals, and as avengers who will be at hand in due time. But you, who hold Seleucia, greatest of cities, and the kingdom of Persis famed for its riches — what do you look for from them but guile in the present and war hereafter? The Romans have arms ready against all men, the sharpest against those whose conquest yields the greatest spoils; by daring and by deceiving and by sowing wars out of wars they have grown great. By this habit they will blot out all things, or perish. And that is no hard matter, if you in Mesopotamia, and we in Armenia, hem in an army that is without grain, without reinforcements, kept safe so far only by fortune, or by our own faults. And that fame will follow you — that, marching to the help of great kings, you crushed the bandits of the nations. This I urge and exhort you to do, and not to choose rather, by our ruin, to put off your own, instead of becoming, through alliance, the victor.
Nunc quaeso considera, nobis oppressis utrum firmiorem te ad resistundum an finem belli futurum putes? scio equidem tibi magnas opes virorum, armorum et auri esse; et ea re a nobis ad societatem, ab illis ad praedam pe- teris. ceterum consilium est, Tigranis regno integro meis militibus belli prudentibus procul ab domo parvo labore per nostra corpora bellum conficere, quo m neque vincere neque vinci sine tuo periculo possumus. an ignoras Romanos, postquam ad occidentem pergentibus finem Oceanus fecit, arma huc convortisse? neque quicquam a principio nisi raptum habere, domum coniuges agros imperium? convenas olim sine patria parentibus, peste conditos orbis terrarum; quibus non humana ulla neque divina obstant, quin socios amicos, procul iuxta sitos, inopes potentisque trahant excindant, omniaque non serva et maxume regna hostilia ducant? namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustos dominos volunt; nos suspecti sumus aemuli et in tempore vindices adfuturi. tu vero, quoi Seleucea, maxuma urbium, regnumque Persidis inclutis divitiis est, quid ab illis nisi dolum in praesens et postea bellum expectas? Romani arma in omnis habent, acerruma in eos, quibus victis spolia maxuma sunt; audendo et fallundo et bella ex bellis serundo magni facti: per hunc morem extinguent omnia aut occident. quod haud difficile est, si tu Mesopotamia, nos Armenia circumgredimur exercitum sine frumento, sine auxiliis, fortuna aut nostris vitiis adhuc incolumem. teque illa fama sequetur, auxilio profectum magnis regibus latrones gentium oppressisse. quod uti facias, moneo hortorque, neu malis pernicie nostra tuam prolatare quam societate victor fieri.’