ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STANDARDS FROM PHRAATES.
Horace
We believe from his thundering that Jupiter has dominion in the heavens:
Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity the Britons and terrible
Parthians being added to the empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus
lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? And has (O [corrupted]
senate, and degenerate morals!) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of
the sacred bucklers, of the [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta,
grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, Jupiter and the city
being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this,
dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent
destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to
perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to
the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers
without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind
their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the
fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. The
soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver
fellow!--No--you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once
stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does
genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in
those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled
from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous,
who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon
the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs
with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing
no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. O
scandal! O mighty Carthage, elevated to a higher pitch by Italy's
disgraceful downfall! He _(Regulus)_ is reported to have rejected the
embrace of his virtuous wife and his little sons like one degraded; and
to have sternly fixed his manly countenance on the ground, until, as an
adviser, by his counsel he confirmed the wavering senators, and amid his
weeping friends hastened away, a glorious exile. Notwithstanding he knew
what the barbarian executioner was providing for him, yet he pushed from
his opposing kindred and the populace retarding his return, in no other
manner, than if (after he had quitted the tedious business of his
clients, by determining their suit) he was only going to the Venafrian
plains, or the Lacedaemonian Tarentum.
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