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[4]
Lar Tolumnius, the king of Veii, slew
four ambassadors of the Roman people, at Fidenae, whose statues were standing in
the rostra till within my recollection. The honor was well deserved. For our
ancestors gave those men who had encountered death in the cause of the republic
an imperishable memory in exchange for this transitory life. We see in the
rostra the statue of Cnaeus Octavius, an illustrious and great man, the first
man who brought the consulship into that family, which afterward abounded in
illustrious men. There was no one then who envied him, because he was a new man;
there was no one who did not honor his virtue. But yet the embassy of Octavius
was one in which there was no suspicion of danger. For having been sent by the
senate to investigate the dispositions of kings and of free nations, and
especially to forbid the grandson of king Antiochus, the one who had carried on
war against our forefathers, to maintain fleets and to keep elephants, he was
slain at Laodicea, in the gymnasium, by
a man of the name of Leptines.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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