fathers, that in deliberating on such a measure, it ought also to be considered, (if you are disposed to be over severe, which you cannot do from any demerit of ours,) to what sort of enemy you would abandon us. Is it to Pyrrhus, for instance, who treated us, when his prisoners, like guests; or to a barbarian and Carthaginian, of whom it is difficult to determine whether his rapacity or cruelty be the greater? If you were to see the chains, the squalid appearance, the loathsomeness of your countrymen, that spectacle would not, I am confident, less affect you, than if, on the other hand, you beheld your legions prostrate on the plains of Cannae. You may behold the solicitude and the tears of our kinsmen, as they stand in the lobby of your senate-house, and await your answer. When they are in so much suspense and anxiety in behalf of us, and those who are absent, what think you must be our own feelings, whose lives and liberty are at stake? By Hercules! should Hannibal himself, contrary to his nature, be disposed to be lenient towards us, yet we should not consider our lives worth possessing, since we have seemed unworthy of being ransomed by you. Formerly, prisoners dismissed by Pyrrhus, without ransom, returned to Rome; but they returned in company with ambassadors, the chief men of the state, who were sent to ransom them. Would I return to my country, a citizen, and not considered worth three hundred denarii? Every man has his own way of thinking, conscript fathers. I know that my life and person are at stake. But the danger which threatens my reputation affects me most, if we should go away rejected and condemned by you; for men will never suppose that you grudged the price of our redemption."