Читать книгу Yale Classics (Vol. 2) - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 478

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“Our ancestors, Conscript Fathers, never wanted conduct nor courage; nor did they think it unworthy of them to imitate the customs of other nations, if they were useful and praiseworthy. From the Samnites they learned the exercise of arms, and borrowed from them their weapons of war; and most of their ensigns of magistracy from the Tuscans: in a word, they were very careful to practise whatever appeared useful to them, whether among their allies or their enemies; choosing rather to imitate than envy what was excellent.

“Now in those days, in imitation of the custom of Greece, they inflicted stripes on guilty citizens, and capital punishment on such as were condemned: but when the commonwealth became great and powerful, and the vast number of citizens gave rise to factions; when the innocent began to be circumvented, and other such inconveniences to take place; then the Porcian and other laws were made, which provided no higher punishment than banishment for the greatest crimes. These considerations, Conscript Fathers, appear to me of the greatest weight against our pursuing any new resolution on this occasion: for surely their share of virtue and wisdom, who from so small beginnings raised so mighty an empire, far exceeds ours, who are scarce able to preserve what they acquired so gloriously.—‘What! shall we discharge the conspirators,’ you will say, ‘to reinforce Catiline’s army?’ By no means: but my opinion is this; that their estates should be confiscated; their persons closely confined in the most powerful cities of Italy; and that no one move the senate or the people for any favour towards them, under the penalty of being declared by the senate an enemy to the state and the welfare of its members.”