Kitap 21
43
"Do not think because the war, being against Rome, bears a great name, that therefore victory will be correspondingly difficult. Many a despised enemy has fought a long and costly fight; nations and kings of high renown have been beaten with a very slight effort. For, setting aside the glory which surrounds the name of Rome, what point is there in which they can be compared to you? To say nothing of your twenty years' campaigning earned on with all your courage, all your good fortune, from the pillars of Hercules, from the shores of the ocean, from the furthest corners of the earth, through the midst of all the most warlike peoples of Spain and Gaul, you have arrived here as victors. The army with which you will fight is made up of raw levies who were beaten, conquered, and hemmed in by the Gauls this very summer, who are strangers to their general, and he a stranger to them. I, reared as I was, almost born, in the headquarters tent of my father, a most distinguished general, I, who have subjugated Spain and Gaul, who have conquered not only the Alpine tribes, but, what is a much greater task, the Alps themselves-am I to compare myself with this six months' general who has deserted his own army, who, if any one were to point out to him the Romans and the Carthaginians after their standards were removed, would, I am quite certain, not know which army he was in command of as consul? I do not count it a small matter, soldiers, that there is not a man amongst you before whose eyes I have not done many a soldierly deed, or to whom I, who have witnessed and attested his courage, could not recount his own gallant exploits and the time and place where they were performed. I was your pupil before I was your commander, and I shall go into battle surrounded by men whom I have commended and rewarded thousands of times against those who know nothing of each other, who are mutual strangers.
