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Good morals, accordingly, were cultivated in the city and in the camp. There was the greatest possible concord, and the least possible avarice. Justice and probity prevailed among the citizens, not more from the influence of the laws than from natural inclination. They displayed animosity, enmity, and resentment only against the enemy. Citizens contended with citizens in nothing but honor. They were magnificent in their religious services, frugal in their families, and steady in their friendships.
By these two virtues, intrepidity in war, and equity in peace, they maintained themselves and their state. Of their exercise of which virtues, I consider these as the greatest proofs; that, in war, punishment was oftener inflicted on those who attacked an enemy contrary to orders, and who, when commanded to retreat, retired too slowly from the contest, than on those who had dared to desert their standards, or, when pressed by the enemy,1 to abandon their posts; and that, in peace, they governed more by conferring benefits than by exciting terror, and, when they received an injury, chose rather to pardon than to revenge it.
1 IX. Pressed by the enemy] “Pulsi.” In the words pulsi loco cedere ausi erant, loco is to be joined, as Dietsch observes, with cedere, not, as Kritzius puts it, with pulsi. "To retreat," adds Dietsch, " is disgraceful only to those qui ab hostibus se pelli patiantur, who suffer themselves to be repulsed by the enemy."
Conspiracy of Catiline. Sallust. Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A. New York and London. Harper & Brothers. 1899.
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