Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
[Sidenote:--9--] "Up, fellow-soldiers! Up, men of Rome! Show these pests
how much even in misfortune we surpass them. It is a shame for you now to
lose ingloriously what but a short while ago you gained by your valor.
Often have we ourselves and also our fathers with far fewer numbers than
we have at the present conquered far more numerous antagonists. Fear not
the host of them or their rebellion: their boldness rests on nothing
better than headlong rashness unaided by arms and exercise. Fear not
because they have set on fire a few cities: they took these not by force
nor after a battle, but one was betrayed and the other abandoned. Do you
now exact from them the proper penalty for these deeds, that so they may
learn by actual experience what they undertook when they wronged such men
as us."
[Sidenote:--10--] After speaking these words to some he came to a second
group and said: "Now is the occasion, now, fellow-soldiers, for zeal, for
daring. If to-day you prove yourselves brave men, you will recover what
has slipped from your grasp. If you overcome this enemy, no one else will
any longer withstand us. By one such battle you will both make sure of
your present possessions and subdue whatever is left. All soldiers
stationed anywhere else will emulate you and foes will be terror-stricken.
Therefore, since it is in your own hands either to rule fearlessly all
mankind, both the nations that your fathers left under your control and
those which you yourselves have gained in addition, or else to be bereft
of them utterly, choose rather to be free, to rule, to live in wealth, to
enjoy prosperity, than through indolence to suffer the reverse of these
conditions."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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