[24]
For it is a very serious consideration for the Roman
people, if they are not to be able to avail themselves of the help of allies
who are endued with any extraordinary virtue, and who may be willing to join
themselves to us, and to consider our danger their own; and it is also an
injurious and insulting thing towards the allies, and for those federate
states that we are now discussing, that our most faithful and united allies
should be shut out from these rewards and from these honours, which are open
to our mercenary troops, which are open to our enemies, which
are open often even to our slaves. For we see that mercenary troops in
numbers from Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and other provinces have had the freedom of the
city conferred on them, and we know that those enemies who have come over to
our commanders and have been of great use to our republic have been made
citizens and lastly that slaves,—beings whose rights, and fortune,
and condition are the lowest of all,—who have deserved well of the
republic we see constantly presented publicly with liberty, that is to say,
with the rights of citizenship.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.