Book 5
54.2
Has our native soil, this land we call our motherland, so slight a hold upon us? Does our love for our country cling only to its buildings?
54.3
Unpleasant as it is to recall my sufferings, still more your injustice, I will nevertheless confess to you that whenever I thought of my native City all these things came into my mind —the hills, the plains, the Tiber, this landscape so familiar to me, this sky beneath which I was born and bred —and I pray that they may now move you by the affection they inspire to remain in your City, rather than that, after you have abandoned it, they should make you pine with home-sickness.
54.4
Not without good reason did gods and men choose this spot as the site of a City, with its bracing hills, its commodious river, by means of which the produce of inland countries may be brought down and over-sea supplies obtained; a sea near enough for all useful purposes, but not so near as to be exposed to danger from foreign fleets; a district in the very centre of Italy —in a word, a position singularly adapted by nature for the expansion of a city.
