Curiosities & wonders > Titus Livius' Roman history

476
TITUS LIVIUS*
Book V.
CHAP. LI.
^ Speech of Camillus.
DlSPUTES with the tribunes, gentlemen, are so
‘ unsupportable to me, that the only consolation I had.
‘ whilst I lived a miserable exile at Ardea, was to con-
‘ sider myself out of the reach of these cavils : for which
‘ express reason, I was resolved never more to set afoot
‘ jn this city had I not been recalled by a decree of the
‘ senate, and your suffrages. Neither is it owing to any
‘ change in my opinion, that I am now returned; the
‘ situation of your affairs obliged me to it. The ques-
* tion was not to replace myself in Rome, but to rein-
* state Rome itself upon the seat of its empire. And at
* this instant, nothing would give me greater pleasure,
t than to remain quiet, and be silent, were not this too
‘ a struggle in behalf of my country, to abandon which,
‘ would be shameful in any other, but in Camillus, cri-
* minal to the last degree, while any spark of life re-
‘ mains. For what occasion had we to recover, or wrest
‘ this our city when besieged, out of the hands of the Bar-
‘ barians, if after all our exertions, we ourselves should
* abandon it ? When the gods and the Roman people
' held, by actual possession, the capitol and citadel,
‘ whilst all the rest of the city together fell a sacrifice to
* the victorious Gauls; shall we now, when conquerors,
* after all we have done to recover this city, abandon al-
« so the capitol and citadel, and our prosperity be the
* cause of a greater desolation in Rome, than even our
* adversity? If indeed these religious rites, which were
* instituted and handed down to us from the foundation
« of the city, were to be totally disregarded by us, yet
« the protection of the gods, hath been so strongly
* marked to us in the present instance, that for men to
‘ neglect the worship of the gods, were in my opinion,
‘ absolutely impossible. Only look back upon what has
* happened to us, good or bad, for some years past, and
< you will see evidently, that every thing has succeeded
* with us, when submissive and dutiful to the gods, and
* every thing unfortunate, when we despised them.
♦ First of all, let us take a reviewofthe war with Veii,
« which continued for so many years, with incredible