Truly as great and powerful cities, as Ennius says, are as I think, to be preferred to villages and castles; so those who stand pre-eminent in those cities, in authority and counsel, are to be esteemed far before those in wisdom, who are altogether ignorant of the conduct of public affairs. And since we are chiefly urged by a desire to increase the possessions of the human race, and seek by our counsels and labours, to surround the life of man with gratification and security, and are incited by the instincts of nature to these enjoyments; let us hold the course which was always that of the best men: nor attend to those signals which speculative philosophers make from their retirement, to allure back those who are already far advanced. III. Against these reasons so certain and so clear, it is urged by those who are opposed to us: first, the labour to be undergone in preserving the public welfare; a slight impediment to the zealous and industrious, not alone in matters of such high import, but in inferior things: whether in studies or in official stations; and to be despised even in affairs of business. To this they add the dangers to which life is exposed, and the dread of death, which brave men scorn; being wont to view it as more wretched to waste away by infirmity and old age, than to seize an occasion to devote that life to the advantage of their country, which one day must be rendered to nature. It is here however they deem themselves most successful and eloquent, when they bring forward the calamities of eminent men, and the injuries heaped upon them by their ungrateful countrymen. Here come the instances in Grecian history. Miltiades, the conqueror and subduer of the Persians, with those wounds yet streaming, which he received in front, in the height of victory: preserved from the weapons of the enemy, to waste away his life in the chains of his countrymen. And Themistocles proscribed and driven from the country he had freed, flying, not to the harbours of that Greece he had preserved, but to the barbarous shores he had harrassed. Nor indeed are instances wanting among the Athenians of levity and cruelty towards great numbers of their citizens; instances which springing up repeatedly among them, are said also to have abounded too conspicuously in our city. For either the exile of Camillus, the misfortune of Ahala, the ill will towards Nasica, or the expulsion of Lenas, or the condemnation of Opimus is remembered: or the flight of Metellus, the sad overthrow of C. Marius, the cutting off of the most eminent citizens, or the destruction of many of them, which soon after followed. Nor indeed is my name forgotten. And I judge that deeming themselves to owe both life and ease to my peril and counsel, they have a more deep and tender remembrance of me. But it is not easy to explain how they who cross the seas for the sake of observing or describing * * * [Two pages wanting.]