Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 2.pdf/23

 nothing to do with the Saguntines. Saguntum is on the Iberus; you must not move a step in any direction. Is it a small thing that you take away my most ancient provinces—Sicily and Sardinia? Will you take Spain also? And should I withdraw thence, you will cross over into Africa.

Will cross, did I say? They have sent the two consuls of this year, one to Africa, the other to Spain: there is nothing left to us in any quarter, except what we can assert to ourselves by arms. Those may be cowards and dastards who have something to look back upon; whom, flying through safe and unmolested roads, their own lands and their own country will receive: there is a necessity for you to be brave, and, since all between victory and death is broken oft from you by inevitable despair, either to conquer, or, if fortune should waver, to meet death rather in battle than in flight. If this be well fixed and determined in the minds of you all, I will repeat, you have already conquered; no stronger incentive to victory has been given to man by the immortal gods.