What lacks there to sanction and establish my glory and to set it on the topmost pinnacle of fame? I ask you, what is there lacking? Aemilianus Strabo, who has already held the consulship and is destined, as we all hope and pray, soon to be a proconsul, proposed the resolution conferring these honours upon me in the senate-house of Carthage. You gave your unanimous assent to the proposal. Surely in your eyes this was more than a mere resolution, it was a solemn enactment of law. Nay more, all the Carthaginians gathered in this august assembly showed such readiness in granting a site for the statue that they might make it clear to you that, if they put off a resolution for the erection of a second statue, as I hope,[56] to the next meeting of the senate, they were influenced by the desire to show the fullest reverence and respect to their honourable consular, and to avoid seeming to emulate rather than imitate his beneficence. That is to say, they wished to set apart a whole day for the business of conferring on me the public honour still in store. Moreover, these most excellent magistrates, these most gracious chiefs of your city, remembered that the charge with which you men of Carthage had entrusted them was in full harmony with their desires. Would you have me be ignorant, be silent, as to these details? It would be rank ingratitude. Far from that, I offer my very warmest thanks to the whole assembly for their most lavish favour. I could not be more grateful. For they have honoured me with the most flattering applause in that senate-house, where even to be named is the height of honour. And so I have in some sense achieved--pardon my vanity--that which was so hard to achieve, and seemed indeed not unnaturally to be beyond my powers. I have won the affections of the people, the favour of the senate, the approbation of the magistrates and the chief men of the city. What lacks there now to the honour of my statue, save the price of the bronze and the service of the artist? These have never been denied me even in small cities. Much less shall Carthage deny it, Carthage, whose senate, even where greater issues are at stake, decrees and counts not the cost. But I will speak of this more fully at a later date, when you have given fuller effect to your resolution. Moreover, when the time comes for the dedication of my statue, I will proclaim my gratitude to you yet more amply in another written discourse, will declare it to you, noble senators, to you, renowned citizens, to you, my worthy friends. Yes, I will commit my gratitude to the retentive pages of a book, that it may travel through every province and, worlds and ages hence, record my praises of your kindness to all peoples and all time. [Footnote 56: _quantum spero_ (MSS.).] _Fragment of a panegyric on Scipio Orfitus._