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THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

entirely cultivated like Italy itself. Ships traverse not only the Rhone or the Arar, but the Mosa, the Liger, the very Rhine, and the very ocean. Places of which we had not even heard the titles to lead us to think that they existed, were likewise subdued for us: the formerly unknown he made accessible, the formerly unexplored navigable by his greatness of purpose and greatness of accomplishment. And had not certain persons out of envy formed a faction against him—or rather us—and forced him to return here before the proper time, he would certainly have subdued Britain entire, together with the remaining islands surrounding it, and all of Celtica to the Arctic Ocean, so that we should have had as borders not land or people for the future, but air and the outer sea. For these reasons you also, seeing the greatness of his mind and his deeds and good fortune, assigned him the right to hold office a very long time—a privilege which, from the hour that we became a democracy has belonged to no other man: I mean holding the leadership during eight whole years in succession. This shows that you thought him to be really winning all those conquests for you and never entertained the suspicion that he would strengthen himself to your hurt.

No, you desired that he should spend in those regions as long a time as possible. He was prevented, however, by those who regarded the government as no longer a public but their own private possession, from subjugating the remain-

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