Ab urbe condita

The valour of your soldiers, the dignity of Rome, demand that we should not limit our view to Veii and this present war, but seek for reputation in time to come in respect of other wars and amongst all other nations.” “Do you imagine that the opinion men form of us in this crisis is a matter of slight importance?

Is it a matter of indifference whether our neighbours regard Rome in such a light that when any city has sustained her first momentary attack it has nothing more to fear from her, or whether

on the other hand, the terror of our name is such that no weariness of a protracted siege, no severity of winter, can dislodge a Roman army from any city which it has once invested, that it knows no close to a war but victory, and that it conducts its campaigns by perseverance as much as by dash?

Perseverance is necessary in every kind of military operation, but especially in the conduct of sieges, for the majority of cities are impregnable, owing to the strength of their fortifications and their position, and time itself conquers them with hunger and thirst, and captures them as it will capture Veii unless the tribunes of the plebs extend their protection to the enemy and the Veientines find in Rome the support which they are vainly seeking in Etruria.

Can anything happen to the Veientines more in accordance with their wishes than that the City of Rome should be filled with sedition and the contagion of it spread to the camp?

But amongst the enemy there is actually so much respect for law and order that they have not been goaded into

revolution either by weariness of the siege or even aversion to absolute monarchy, nor have they shown exasperation at the refusal of succours by Etruria. The man who advocates sedition will be put to death on the spot, and no one will be allowed to say the things which are uttered amongst you with impunity.

With us the man who deserts his standard or abandons his post is liable to be cudgelled to

death, but those who urge the men to abandon the standards and desert from the camp are listened to, not by one or two only; they have the whole army for an audience.