Book 28
43
"The speaker dwelt upon the danger to which I should be exposed if I landed in Africa, showing apparently solicitude not only for the commonwealth and its army but even for me. What has led to this sudden anxiety on my account? When my father and my uncle were killed and their armies all but annihilated; when Spain was lost; when four Carthaginian armies and their generals were holding the whole country down by the terror of their arms; when you were looking for a man to take the supreme command in that war and no one appeared, no one came forward to offer himself but me; when the Roman people conferred the supreme command on me before I had reached my twenty-fifth year-why did no one then say anything about my age, the strength of the enemy, the difficulties of the campaign or the recent disaster which had overtaken my father and my uncle? Has some calamity occurred recently in Africa greater than the one which happened then in Spain? Are there larger armies and better and more numerous commanders in Africa now than there were then in Spain? Was I then at a riper age for undertaking a great war than I am today? Is Spain a more convenient field for operations against the Carthaginians than Africa? Now that I have scattered four Carthaginian armies in flight, reduced so many cities by force or fear, and subjugated every part down to the shores of the ocean, petty kings and savage tribes alike; now that I have reconquered the whole of Spain so completely that no vestige of war anywhere remains, it is an easy task to make light of my services, as easy, in fact, as it will be, when I have returned victorious from Africa, to make light of those very difficulties which are now painted in such dark colours in order to keep me here.
