THE SPEECHES OF MARCUS
and an ailing,[1] unable to take food without pain, or sleep without care.
"But since Cassius would never agree to meet me for this purpose for what faith could he have in me who kept so ill his faith to me?—you, my fellow soldiers, must in any case be of good cheer. For never, I take it, have Cilicians and Syrians and Jews and Egyptians been a match for you, and never will be, no, not though their muster was as many thousand times more numerous than yours as it is now less. Nor need even Cassius himself, ever so good a commander though he is reputed to be, and credited with many successful campaigns, be held of any great account at the present crisis. For an eagle at the head of daws makes no formidable foe, nor a lion at the head of fawns, and as for the Arabian war and the great Parthian war, it was you, not Cassius, who brought them to a successful end. Moreover, even if he has won distinction by his Parthian campaigns, you too have Verus,[2] who has won not less but even far more victories, and made greater acquisitions than he.
"But perhaps even now, learning that I am alive, he has repented of his action; for surely it was only because he believed me dead, that he acted thus. But if he still maintain his opposition, yet when he learns that we are indeed marching against him, he will doubtless take a different view both from dread of you and from reverence for me. I at any rate, fellow soldiers, have but one fear—for I will tell you the whole truth—that either he should take his own life from very shame of coming into our presence, or that another should slay him, learning both that I shall come and that I am actually setting out against him. For great is the prize of war and of victory—a prize such as no one among men has ever won—of which I shall be deprived. And what is that? To forgive a man who has done wrong, to be still a friend to one who has trodden friendship underfoot, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith.[3] What I say may perhaps seem to you incredible, but you must not disbelieve it;
