permits"--emphasizing the two words--"I shall have the honor
to tell him and you, too, citizen, that I believe I have read
in Plutarch that Alexander the Great, when he started for India,
took with him but eighteen or twenty talents in gold, something
like one hundred or one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Now,
do you suppose that with these eighteen or twenty talents alone
he fed his army, won the battle of Granicus, subdued Asia Minor,
conquered Tyre, Gaza, Syria and Egypt, built Alexandria, penetrated
to Lybia, had himself declared Son of Jupiter by the oracle of
Ammon, penetrated as far as the Hyphases, and, when his soldiers
refused to follow him further, returned to Babylon, where he
surpassed in luxury, debauchery and self-indulgence the most
debauched and voluptuous of the kings of Asia? Did Macedonia
furnish his supplies? Do you believe that King Philip, most indigent
of the kings of poverty-stricken Greece, honored the drafts his
son drew upon him? Not so. Alexander did as citizen Morgan is
doing; only, instead of stopping the coaches on the highroads,
he pillaged cities, held kings for ransom, levied contributions
from the conquered countries. Let us turn to Hannibal. You know
how he left Carthage, don't you? He did not have even the eighteen
or twenty talents of his predecessor; and as he needed money, he
seized and sacked the city of Saguntum in the midst of peace,
in defiance of the fealty of treaties. After that he was rich and
could begin his campaign. Forgive me if this time I no longer
quote Plutarch, but Cornelius Nepos. I will spare you the details
of his descent from the Pyrenees, how he crossed the Alps and
the three battles which he won, seizing each time the treasures
of the vanquished, and turn to the five or six years he spent in
Campania. Do you believe that he and his army paid the Capuans
for their subsistence, and that the bankers of Carthage, with