the lands, might avail themselves of the homes afforded them by the city; and that on that account the buildings of the city were not destroyed.
See, now, how wide is the distance between the counsels of our ancestors and the insane projects of these men. They chose Capua to be a refuge for our farmers, a market for the country people, a barn and granary for the Campanian district. These men, having expelled the farmers, have wasted and squandered your revenues, are raising this same Capua into the seat of a new republic, are preparing a vast mass to be an enemy to the old republie. But if our ancestors had thought that any one in such an illustrious empire, in such an admirable constitution as that of the Roman people, would have been like Mareus Brutus or Publius Rullus (for these are the only two men whom we have hitherto seen, who have wished to transfer all this republic to Capua), they would not, in truth, have left even the name of that city in existence. But they thought that in the case of Corinth and Carthage, even if they had taken away their senates and their magistrates, and deprived the citizens of the lands, still men would not be wanting who would restore those cities, and change the existing state of things in them before we could hear of it. But here, under the very eyes of the senate and Roman people, they thought that nothing could take place which might not be put down and extinguished before it had got to any
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