Roman name, what remains in which they can be compared to you? To pass over in silence your service for twenty years, distinguished by such valor and success, you have made your way to this place from the pillars of Hercules, from the ocean and the remotest limits of the world, advancing victorious through so many of the fiercest nations of Gaul and Spain; you will fight with a raw army, which this very summer was beaten, conquered, and surrounded by the Gauls, as yet unknown to its general, and ignorant of him. Shall I compare myself—almost born, and certainly bred, in the tent of my father,[1] that most illustrious commander, myself the subjugator of Spain and Gaul, the conqueror too not only of the Alpine nations, but, what is much more, of the Alps themselves—with this six-months' general, the deserter of his army?—to whom, if any one, having taken away, their standards, should today show the Carthaginians and Romans, I am sure that he would not know of which army he was consul.
I do not regard it, soldiers, as of small account that there is not a man among you before whose eyes I have not often achieved some military exploit; and to whom, in like manner, I, the spectator and witness of his valor, could not recount his own gallant deeds, particularized by time and place. With soldiers who have a
- ↑ At the age of nine Hannibal had begged his father to take him with him in a campaign from Carthage to Spain. Before going he swore on the altar of sacrifice eternal enmity to Rome.
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