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"Other princes have been received into your friendship after having been conquered in war, or have solicited an alliance with you in circumstances of distress; but our family commenced its league with the Romans in the war with Carthage, at a time when their faith was a greater object of attraction than their fortune. Suffer not, then, O Conscript Fathers, a descendent of that family to implore aid from you in vain. If I had no other plea for obtaining your assistance but my wretched fortune; nothing to urge, but that, having been recently a king, powerful by birth, by character, and by resources, I am now dishonored, afflicted,Dishonored, afflicted] Deformatus œrumnis. destitute, and dependent on the aid of others, it would yet become the dignity of Rome to protect me from injury, and to allow no man's dominions to be increased by crime. But I am driven from those very territories which the Roman people gave to my ancestors, and from which my father and grandfather, in conjunction with yourselves, expelled Syphax and the Carthaginians. It is what you bestowed that has been wrested from me; in my wrongs you are insulted.