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strength, which could once make him a leader indeed, to pene trate a phalanx or guide a pursuit. His very armor would be a burden now. His battle-cry would be drowned in the din of the onset. His sword would fall harmless on his opponent's shield. But, if he cannot live, he can at least die, for his country! Do not deny him this supreme consolation. Consider every indignity, every torture, which Carthage shall heap on his dying hours, will be better than a trumpet's call to your armies.

11. They will remember only Regulus, their fellow-soldier and their leader. They will forget his defeats. They will regard only his services to the Republic. Tunis, Sardinia, Sicily,-every well-fought field, won by his blood and theirs,will flash on their remembrance, and kindle their avenging wrath. And so shall Regulus, though dead, fight as he never fought before against the foe.

12. Conscript Fathers! There is another theme. My family -forgive the thought! To you, and to Rome, I confide them. I leave them no legacy but my name,-no testament but my example.

13. Ambassadors of Carthage! I have spoken; though not as you expected. I am your captive. Lead me back to whatever fate may await me. Doubt not that you shall find, to Roman hearts, country is dearer than life, and integrity more precious than fréedom!

YE

24. LEONIDAS TO HIS THREE HUNDRED.

E men of Sparta, listen to the hope with which the Gods inspire Leonidas! Consider how largely our death may redound to the glory and benefit of our country. Against this barbarian king, who, in his battle array, reckons as many nations as our ranks do soldiers, what could united Greece effect?

2. In this emergency there is need that some unexpected power should interpose itself;-that a valor and devotion,

unknown hitherto, even to Sparta, should strike, amaze, confound, this ambitious despot! From our blood, here freely shed to-day, shall this moral power, this sublime lesson of patriotism, proceed. To Greece it shall teach the secret of her strength; to the Persians, the certainty of their weakness.

3. Before our scarred and bleeding bodies, we shall see the great king grow pale at his own victory, and recoil affrighted Or, should he succeed in forcing the pass of Thermopylæ, he will tremble to learn, that, in marching upon our cities, he will find ten thousand, after us, equally prepared for death.

4. Ten thousand, do I say? O, the swift contagion of a generous enthusiasm! Our example shall make Greece all fertile in heroes. An avenging cry shall follow the cry of her affliction.

5. Country Independence! From the Messenian Hills to the Hellespont, every heart shall respond; and a hundred thousand heroes, with one sacred accord, shall arm themselves, in emulation of our unanimous death.

6. These rocks shall give back the echo of their oaths. Then shall our little band,-the brave these hundred,-from the world of shades, revisit the scene; behold the haughty Xerxes, a fugitive, recross the Hellespont in a frail bark; while Greece, after eclipsing the most glorious of her exploits, shall hallow a new Olympus in the mound that covers our tombs.

7. Yes, fellow-soldiers, history and posterity shall consecrate our ashes. Wherever courage is honored, through all time, shall Thermopyla and the Spartan three hundred be remembered. Ours shall be an immortality such as no human glory has yet attained.

8. And when ages shall have swept by, and Sparta's last hour shall have come, then, even in her ruins, shall she be eloquent. Tyrants shall turn away from them, appalled; but the heroes of liberty-the poets, the sages, the historians of ll time-shall invoke and bless the memory of the gallant three hundred of Leonidas !

25. SPEECH OF GALGACUS TO THE CALEDONIANS.

[GALGACUS was by far the bravest and the noblest of all the native chieftains of Britain, that met and resisted the encroachments of the Romans under Agricola. He is represented by Tacitus, a Roman historian, as addressing his followers,—a vast multitude encamped on the Grampian Hills, and eager for battle,-in the following forcible and spirited strain :]

AS

S often as I reflect on the origin of the war, and our ne cessities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your will, are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For we have all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies behind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet hovers around.

2. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the brave, are now the only refuge of the cowardly. In former actions in which the Britons fought with various success against the Romans, our valor was a resource to look to; for we, the noblest of all the nations, and, on that account, placed in its inmost recesses, unused to the spectacle of servitude, had our eyes even inviolate from its hateful sight.

3. We, the last of the earth, and of freedom, unknown to fame, have been hitherto defended by our remoteness; now the extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever regarded as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks and the waves, and the deadlier Romans,-men whose pride you have in vain sought to depreciate by moderation and subservience.

4. The robbers of the globe, when the land fails, they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich? they are avaricious; is he poor? they are ambitious; the East and the West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, massacre, seize on false pretences, they call empire; and, when they make a desert, they call it peace.

5. Nature has made children and relations dearest to all: they are carried off by levies to serve elsewhere. Our goods and fortunes they seize on as tribute, our corn as supplies;

our very bodies and hands they wear out, amid strife and contumely, in fortifying stations in the woods and marshes.

6. Serfs born in servitude are once bought, and ever after fed by their masters; Britain alone daily buys its slavery, daily feeds it. As in families the last slave purchased is often a laughing-stock to the rest, so we, the last whom they have reduced to slavery, are the first to be agonized by their contumely, and reserved for destruction.

7. We have neither fields, nor minerals, nor harbors, in working which we can be employed: the valor and fierceness of the vanquished are obnoxious to the victors: our very distance and obscurity, as they render us the safer, make us the more suspected. Laying aside, therefore, all hope of pardon, assume the courage of men to whom salvation and glory are alike dear.

8. The Trinobantes, under a female leader, had courage to buru a colony and storm castles; and, had not their success rendered them negligent, they would have cast off the yoke. We, untouched and unconquered, nursed in freedom, shall we not show, on the first onset, what men Caledonia has nursed in her bosom?

9. Do not believe the Romans have the same prowess in war as lust in peace. They have grown great on our divisions; they know how to turn the vices of men to the glory of their own army. As it has been drawn together by success, so disaster will dissolve it, unless you suppose that the Gauls and the Germans, and, I am ashamed to say, many of the Britons, who now lend their blood to a foreign usurpation, and in their hearts are rather enemies than slaves, can be etained by faith and affection.

10. Fear and terror are but slender bonds of attachment; when you remove them, as fear ceases, terror begins. All the incitements of victory are on our side: no wives inflame the Romans; no parents are there, to call shame on their flight; they have no country, or it is elsewhere. Few in number, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown woods and seas,

the Gods have delivered them, shut in and bound, into your hands. Let not their vain aspect, the glitter of silver and gold, which neither covers nor wounds, alarm you.

11. In the very line of the enemy we shall find our friends; the Britons will recognize their own cause; the Gauls will recollect their former freedom; the other Germans will desert them, as lately the Usipii have done. No objects of terror are behind them; naught but empty castles, age-ridden colonies, dissension between cruel masters and unwilling slaves, sick and discordant cities.

12. Here is a leader, an army; there are tributes and payments, and the badges of servitude, which to bear forever, or instantly to avenge, lies in your arms. Go forth, then, into the field, and think of your ancestors and your descendants

TACITUS

26. TITUS QUINTIUS AGAINST QUARRELS BETWEEN THE SENATE AND THE PEOPLE.

THOUGH
HOUGH I am conscious of no fault, O Romans, it is yet

with the utmost shame I have come forward to your Assembly. You have seen it-posterity will know it—that, in my fourth consulate, the Equans and Volscians came in arms to the very gates of Rome, and went away unchastised! Had I foreseen that such an ignominy had been reserved for my official year, that Rome might have been taken while I was Consul,-I would have shunned the office, either by exile or by death.

2. Yes; I have had honors enough,-of life more than enough! I should have died in my third consulate. Whom did these most dastardly enemies despise ?-us, Consuls, o you, citizens? If we are in fault, depose us,-punish us as we deserve. If you, Romans, are to blame, may neither Gods nor men make you suffer for your offences !-only may you repent.

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