hostilities against them, when peaceable and obedient to your orders. I am not about to require from you, conscript fathers, that you may attribute to the Gauls who inhabit Asia, those characteristics which you are well aware belong to the Gallic race in general, savage fierceness and most inveterate hatred to the name of Rome. Excluding the infamous and odious character of the whole nation, judge of these Gauls by themselves. I wish king Eumenes, I wish all the states of Asia were present, and that you heard their complaints, rather than my charges against them. Send ambassadors round all the cities of Asia, and ask whether they were relieved from more grievous servitude by the removal of Antiochus beyond the summits of Taurus, or by the conquest of the Gauls. Let them tell you how often their territories were ravaged, how often their property and their people were carried off as prey; while they had scarcely ever an opportunity of ransoming any prisoners, they heard of nothing but human victims slain, and their children offered up in sacrifice. Be assured that your allies paid tribute to these Gauls; and, though delivered now by you from the yoke of Antiochus, must still have continued to pay it, if I had been inactive. The farther Antiochus was removed, the more tyrannically would the Gauls have domineered in Asia; and all the countries on this side of Taurus you would have annexed to their empire, not to your own. 48. “But, allowing all this to be so; the Gauls formerly sacked Delphi, the common oracle to which all mankind resort, and the central point of the globe of the earth; yet the Roman people did not, on that account, proclaim or wage war against them. I really thought, that there was some distinction to be made between that period when Greece and Asia were not yet under your jurisdiction and dominion, and the present, when you have made Mount Taurus the boundary of the Roman empire; when you grant liberty and independence to the states of that country; when you augment the territories of some; amerce others in a part of their lands; impose tribute; add to, diminish, give, and take away kingdoms, and deem it your business to take care that they may enjoy peace both on land and sea. Is it not the case that you would not have thought Asia liberated unless Antiochus withdrew his garrisons, which lay quiet in their citadels: if the armies of the Gauls roamed about without control, would the grants which you made to king Eumenes be secure, or the liberty of the states entire? But why do I reason thus? as if I had not found the Gauls enemies, but made them such! I appeal to you, Lucius Scipio, whose bravery and good fortune alike I suppliantly sought, and not in vain, from the immortal gods, when I succeeded you in the command; and to you, Publius Scipio, who held, both with your brother the consul, and with the army, the commission of a lieutenant-general and the dignity of a