and on their own confession, of having concerted massacres,
conflagrations, and other horrible and cruel outrages, against their
fellow-citizens and their country, punishment be inflicted, according
to the usage of our ancestors, on the prisoners who have confessed
their guilt, as on men convicted of capital crimes."

LIII. When Cato had resumed his seat, all the senators of consular
dignity, and a great part of the rest,[268] applauded his opinion, and
extolled his firmness of mind to the skies. With mutual reproaches,
they accused one another of timidity, while Cato was regarded as the
greatest and noblest of men; and a decree of the senate was made as he
had advised.

After reading and hearing of the many glorious achievements which the
Roman people had performed at home and in the field, by sea as well as
by land, I happened to be led to consider what had been the great
foundation of such illustrious deeds. I knew that the Romans had
frequently, with small bodies of men, encountered vast armies of the
enemy; I was aware that they had carried on wars[269] with limited
forces against powerful sovereigns; that they had often sustained,
too, the violence of adverse fortune; yet that, while the Greeks
excelled them in eloquence, the Gauls surpassed them in military
glory. After much reflection, I felt convinced that the eminent virtue
of a few citizens had been the cause of all these successes; and hence
it had happened that poverty had triumphed over riches, and a few over
a multitude. And even in later times, when the state had become
corrupted by luxury and indolence, the republic still supported
itself, by its own strength, under the misconduct of its generals and
magistrates; when, as if the parent stock were exhausted,[270] there
was certainly not produced at Rome, for many years, a single citizen