HKB
hand which had missed its stroke being burnt, though it was his own, as if he were beholding the torment of a foe? This also Livy witnesses to with astonishment.
Add to these those sacred victims the Decii, who laid down their lives by an act of devotion for the public safety, whom Livy glorifies in his narrative, not as they deserve, but as he was able. Add to these the self-sacrifice, which words cannot express, of Marcus Cato, that staunchest champion of true liberty. These were men of whom the one, that he might save his country, did not fear the shadow of death; while the other, that he might kindle in the world the passionate love of liberty, showed how dear was liberty, choosing to pass out of life a free man, rather than without liberty to abide in life.[233] The glory of all these heroes glows afresh in the words of Cicero in his book De Finibus; of the Decii he speaks thus: "Publius Decius, the head of the Decii, a consul, when he devoted himself for the state, and charged straight into the Latin host, was he thinking aught of his pleasure, where and when he should take it;--when he knew that he had to die at once, and sought that death with more eager desire than, according to Epicurus, we should seek pleasure? And were it not that his deed had justly received its praise, his son would not have done the like in his fourth consulship; nor would his grandson, again, in the war with Pyrrhus, have fallen, a consul, in battle; and, a third time in continuous succession in that family, have offered himself a victim for the commonwealth." But in the De Officiis,[234] Cicero says of Cato: "Marcus Cato was in no different position from his comrades who in Africa surrendered to Cæsar. The others, had they slain themselves, would perhaps have been blamed for the act, for their life was of less consequence,[235] and their principles were not so strict. But for Cato, to whom nature had given incredible firmness and who had strengthened this severity by his unremitting constancy to his principles, and who never formed a resolution by which he did not abide, he was indeed bound to die rather than to look on the face of a tyrant."
[Footnote 233: Witte quotes the Convito, iv. 5, where all these examples are recounted, almost in the same language. He compares Parad. vi. 46 (Cincinnatus), Purgat. xx. 25 (Fabricius), Parad. vi. 47 (Decii), Purg. i. where Cato guards the approach to Purgatory.]
[Footnote 234: I. 31 (W.), carelessly quoted.]
[Footnote 235: "Levior" al. "lenior."]
VI.--Two things therefore have been made clear: first, that whoever aims at the good of the state aims at right;[236] and secondly, that the Roman people in bringing the world into subjection, aimed at the public weal. Therefore let us argue thus: Whoever aims at right, walks according to right; the Roman people in bringing the world into subjection aimed at right, as we have made manifest in the preceding chapter. Therefore in bringing the world into subjection the Roman people acted according to right, consequently it was by right that they assumed the dignity of Empire.
[Footnote 236: "Finem juris intendit."]