[95]
Ought we not to think that those men who foresaw all these things, O Romans, ought to be
venerated and worshipped by us, and classed almost in the number of the immortal gods? For
what was it which they saw? They saw this, which I entreat you now to remark and take notice
of. Manners are not implanted in men so much by the blood and family, as by those things
which are supplied by the nature of the plan towards forming habits of life, by which we are
nourished, and by which we live. The Carthaginians, a fraudulent and lying nation, were
tempted to a fondness for deceiving by a desire of gain, not by their blood, but by the
character of their situation because, owing to the number of their harbours, they had
frequent intercourse with merchants and foreigners. The Ligurians, being mountaineers, are a
hardy and rustic tribe. The land itself taught them to be so by producing nothing which was
not extracted from it by skillful cultivation, and by great labour. The Campanians were
always proud from the excellence of their soil, and the magnitude of their crops, and the
healthiness, and position, and beauty of their city. From that abundance, and from this
affluence in all things, in the first place, originated those qualities; arrogance, which
demanded of our ancestors that one of the consuls should be chosen from Capua: and in the second place, that luxury which conquered
Hannibal himself by pleasure, who up to that time had proved invincible in arms.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.