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40“What though some god had become our surety that even if we should fail to do all this, no one would plot against us and we should forever enjoy in safety all that we have won, it would still be disgraceful to say that we ought to keep quiet; yet those who are willing to do nothing that is requisite would then have some show of excuse. 2But if, as a matter of fact, it is inevitable that men who possess anything should be plotted against by many, and if it behooves them to anticipate their attacks; if those who hold quietly to their own possessions risk losing even these, while those who without any compulsion employ war to acquire the possessions also of others are protecting their own as well,— 3for no one who fears for his own goods covets those of his neighbour, since his fear concerning what he already has effectually deters him from meddling in what does not belong to him,—if all this be true, why, then, does any one say that we ought not always to be acquiring something more?
4“Do you not recall, partly from hearsay and partly from observation, that none of the Italian races stopped plotting against our country until our ancestors carried the wars into their territory, nor yet the Epirots until our fathers crossed over into Greece? 5Nor Philip, who intended to make a campaign even against Italy, until they harried his land first; nor Perseus, or Antiochus, or Mithridates, until they treated them in the same way? And why mention the other instances? 6But take the Carthaginians; so long as they suffered no disaster at our hands in Africa, they kept crossing into Italy, overrunning the country, sacking the towns, and almost captured the city itself; but when they began to have war made upon them, they fled altogether from our land. 7One might instance the same results in the case of the Gauls and Germans. For these peoples, while we remained on our side of the Alps, often crossed them and ravaged a large part of Italy; but when we ventured at last to make a campaign beyond our own borders and to bring the war home to them, and also took away a part of their territory, we never again saw any war begun by them in Italy, except once. 8When, accordingly, in the face of these facts, anybody declares that we ought not to make war, he simply says that we ought not to be rich, ought not to rule others, ought not to be free, ought not to be Romans. 9Therefore, just as you would not endure it if a man should say any of these things, but would kill him even as he stood before you, so now also, comrades, you must feel the same way toward those who make these other statements, judging their disposition not by their words but by their deeds.
“Therefore none of you will contend, I think, that this is not the right point of view to take.
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