Book 28
28
"I put aside and ignore my own honour and reputation, and assume that I was in no way injured by your too easily crediting the story of my death. But what then? Supposing I had died, would the commonwealth have died with me, would the sovereignty of Rome have shared my fate? No, Jupiter Optimus Maximus would never have allowed a City built for eternity, built under the auspices and sanction of the gods, to be as short-lived as this fragile mortal body of mine. C. Flaminius, Aemilius Paulus, Sempronius Gracchus, Postumius Albinus, M. Marcellus, T. Quinctius Crispinus, Cnaeus Fulvius, and my own relations, the two Scipios, all of them distinguished generals, have been carried off in this single war, and yet Rome lives on and will live on though a thousand more should perish through sickness or the sword. Would then the republic have been interred in my solitary grave? Why even you yourselves, after the defeat and death of my father and my uncle, chose Septimus Marcius to lead you against the Carthaginians, flushed as they were with their recent victory. I am speaking as though Spain would have been left without a general; but would not the sovereignty of the empire have been amply vindicated by M. Silanus, who came into the province invested with the same power and authority as I myself with my brother Lucius and C. Laelius as his lieutenants? Can any comparison be made between their army and you, between their rank and experience and those of the men you have chosen, between the cause for which they are fighting and the one which you have taken up? And if you were superior to them all would you bear arms in company with the Carthaginians against your country, against your fellow-citizens? What injury have they done to you?"
