[87]
Impious men are endeavouring to
transfer our republic to that town in which our ancestors decided that there should be no
republic at all, when they resolved that there were but three cities in the whole earth,
Carthage, Corinth, and Capua, which could
aspire to the power and name of the imperial city. Carthage has been destroyed, because, both from its vast population, and from
the natural advantages of its situation, being surrounded with harbours, and fortified with
walls, it appeared to project out of Africa, and to
threaten the most productive islands of the Roman people. Of Corinth there is scarcely a vestige left. For it was situated on the straits
and in the very jaws of Greece, in such a way that
by land it held the keys of many countries, and that it almost connected two seas, equally
desirable for purposes of navigation, which were separated by the smallest possible distance.
These towns, though they were out of the sight of the empire, our ancestors not only crushed,
but, as I have said before, utterly destroyed, that they might never be able to recover and
rise again and flourish.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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