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7“What achievement, indeed, could one compare with these acts of ours? The conquest of Gaul, the enslavement of Pannonia, the subjugation of Moesia, the overthrow of Egypt? Or Pharnaces, or Juba, or Phraates, or the campaign against the Britons, or the crossing of the Rhine? Yet these are greater and more important deeds than even all our forefathers together performed in all previous time. 2Nevertheless, no one of these exploits deserves a place beside my present act, to say nothing of our civil wars, of all which have ever occurred the greatest and most varied in its changing fortunes, which we fought to an honourable conclusion and brought to a humane settlement, overpowering as enemies all who resisted, but sparing as friends all who yielded; therein setting an example, so that if it should be fated that our city should ever again be afflicted, one might pray that it should conduct its quarrel in the same way. 3Indeed, I will go further: that we, when we possessed a strength so great, and when we so clearly stood at the summit of prowess and good fortune, that we could exercise over you, with or without your consent, our arbitrary rule, did not lose our senses or conceive the desire for sole supremacy, but that he thrust that supremacy aside when it was offered him and that I return it after it has been given me,—that, I say, transcends the deeds of a man ! 4I say this, not by way of idle boasting,—indeed, I should not have said it at all, if I were going to derive any advantage whatever from it,—but in order that you may see that, although we can point to many benefits conferred upon the state at large and to many services rendered to individuals of which we might boast, yet we take the greatest pride in this, that what others so desire that they are even willing to do violence to gain it, this we do not accept even under compulsion.
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