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Omitting many things, that I may not exceed the limits of the work I
have proposed to myself, I come to the epoch between the second and
last Punic wars, during which, according to Sallust, the Romans
lived with the greatest virtue and concord. Now, in this period of
virtue and harmony, the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and
Italy, who had with surprising ability brought to a close the second
Punic war, that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest, who had
defeated Hannibal and subdued Carthage, and whose whole life is said
to have been dedicated to the gods, and cherished in their temples,
this Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to the
accusations of his enemies, and to leave his country, which his valor
had saved and liberated, to spend the remainder of his days in the town
of Liternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile, that he is said
to have given orders that not even his remains should lie in his
ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the pro-consul
Cn. Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome
the luxury of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. It was
then that iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used; then,
too, that female singers were admitted at banquets, and other
licentious abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to
speak, not of the evils men voluntarily practise, but of those they
suffer in spite of themselves. So that the case of Scipio, who
succumbed to his enemies, and died in exile from the country he had
rescued, was mentioned by me as being pertinent to the present
discussion; for this was the reward he received from those Roman gods
whose temples he saved from Hannibal, and who are worshipped only for
the sake of securing temporal happiness. But since Sallust, as we
have seen, declares that the manners of Rome were never better than at
that time, I therefore judged it right to mention the Asiatic luxury
then introduced, that it might be seen that what he says is true, only
when that period is compared with the others during which the morals
were certainly worse, and the factions more violent.
For at that time, I mean between the second and third Punic war,
that notorious Lex Voconia was passed, which prohibited a man from
making a woman, even an only daughter, his heir; than which law I am
at a loss to conceive what could be more unjust. It is true that in
the interval between these two Punic wars the misery of Rome was
somewhat less. Abroad, indeed, their forces were consumed by wars,
yet also consoled by victories; while at home there were not such
disturbances as at other times. But when the last Punic war had
terminated in the utter destruction of Rome's rival, which quickly
succumbed to the other Scipio, who thus earned for himself the,
surname of Africanus, then the Roman republic was overwhelmed with
such a host of ills, which sprang from the corrupt manners induced by
prosperity and security, that the sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen
to have injured Rome more seriously than her long-continued
hostility. During the whole subsequent period down to the time of
Caesar Augustus, who seems to have entirely deprived the Romans of
liberty, a liberty, indeed, which in their own judgment was no longer
glorious, but full of broils and dangers, and which now was quite
enervated and languishing, and who submitted all things again to the
will of a monarch, and infused as it were a new life into the sickly
old age of the republic, and inaugurated a fresh r gime;, during this
whole period, I say, many military disasters were sustained on a
variety of occasions, all of which I here pass by. There was
specially the treaty of Numantia, blotted as it was with extreme
disgrace; for the sacred chickens, they say, flew out of the coop,
and thus augured disaster to Mancinus the consul; just as if, during
all these years in which that little city of Numantia had withstood the
besieging army of Rome, and had become a terror to the republic, the
other generals had all marched against it under unfavorable auspices.
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