sometimes call back even those who have made considerable progress.
III. These reasons, so certain and so evident, are opposed by those who, on the other side, argue that the labors which must necessarily be sustained in maintaining the Commonwealth form but a slight impediment to the vigilant and industrious, and are only a contemptible obstacle in such important affairs, and even in common studies, offices, and employments. They add the peril of life, that base fear of death, which has ever been opposed by brave men, to whom it appears far more miserable to die by the decay of nature and old age than to be allowed an opportunity of gallantly sacrificing that life for their country which must otherwise be yielded up to nature.
On this point, however, our antagonists esteem them selves copious and eloquent when they collect all the calamities of heroic men, and the injuries inflicted on them by their ungrateful countrymen. For on this subject they bring forward those notable examples among the Greeks; and tell us that Miltiades, the vanquisher and conqueror of the Persians, before even those wounds were healed which he had received in that most glorious victory, wasted away in the chains of his fellow-citizens that life which had been preserved from the weapons of the enemy. They cite Themistocles, expelled and proscribed by the country which he had rescued, and forced to flee, not to the Grecian ports which he had preserved, but to the bosom of the barbarous power which he had defeated. There is, indeed, no deficiency of examples to illustrate the levity and cruelty of the Athenians to their noblest citizens—examples which, originating and multiplying among them, are said at different times to have abounded in our own most august empire. For we are told of the exile of Camillus, the disgrace of Ahala, the unpopularity of Nasica, the expulsion of Lænas,[1] the condemnation of
- ↑ It is unnecessary to give an account of the other names here mentioned;but that of Lænas is probably less known. He was Publius Popillius Lænas, consul 132 B.C., the year after the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and it became his duty to prosecute the accomplices of Gracchus, for which he was afterward attacked by Caius Gracchus with such animosity that he withdrew into voluntary exile. Cicero pays a tribute to the energy of Opimius in the first Oration against Catiline, c. iii.
