IX.  Let those, then, who have no fear, cease to pretend to be alarmed, and to be exercising their foresight in the cause of the republic.  And let those who really are afraid of everything, cease to be too fearful, lest the pretence of the one party and the inactivity of the other be injurious to us.  What, in the name of mischief! is the object of always opposing the name of the veterans to every good cause?  For even if I were attached to their virtue, as indeed I am, still, if they were arrogant I should not be able to tolerate their airs.  While we are endeavouring to break the bonds of slavery, shall any one hinder us by saying that the veterans do not approve of it?  For they are not, I suppose, beyond all counting, who are ready to take up arms in defence of the common freedom!  There is no man, except the veteran soldiers, who is stimulated by the indignation of a freeman to repel slavery!  Can the republic then stand, relying wholly on veterans, without a great reinforcement of the youth of the state?  Whom, indeed, you ought to be attached to, if they be assistants to you in the assertion of your freedom, but whom you ought not to follow if they be the advisers of slavery.

Lastly, (let me at last say one true word, one word worthy of myself!)—­if the inclinations of this order are governed by the nod of the veterans, and if all our words and actions are to be referred to their will, death is what we should wish for, which has always, in the minds of Roman citizens, been preferable to slavery.  All slavery is miserable; but some may have been unavoidable.  Do you think, then, that there is never to be a beginning of our endeavours to recover our freedom?  Or, when we would not bear that fortune which was unavoidable, and which seemed almost as if appointed by destiny, shalt we tolerate the voluntary bondage?  All Italy is burning with a desire for freedom.  The city cannot endure slavery any longer.  We have given this warlike attire and these arms to the Roman people much later than they have been demanded of us by them.

X. We have, indeed, undertaken our present course of action with a great and almost certain hope of liberty.  But even if I allow that the events of war are uncertain, and that the chances of Mars are common to both sides, still it is worth while to fight for freedom at the peril of one’s life.  For life does not consist wholly in breathing, there is literally no life at all for one who is a slave.  All nations can endure slavery.  Our state cannot.  Nor is there any other reason for this, except that those nations shrink from toil and pain, and are willing to endure anything so long as they may be free from those evils, but we have been trained and bred up by our forefathers in such a manner, as to measure all our designs and all our actions by the standard of dignity and virtue.  The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.  But if immortality were to be the result of our avoidance of present danger, still slavery would appear still more worthy of being avoided, in proportion as it is of longer duration.  But as all sorts of deaths surround us on all sides night and day, it does not become a man, and least of all a Roman, to hesitate to give up to his country that breath which he owes to nature.