Caesar had conquered the Gauls, Germans, Britons, and all the
west of Europe, and Crassus wished in his turn to march eastward as
far as the Indian Ocean, and to conquer all those regions of Asia
which Pompeius and Lucullus, two great men and actuated by a like
desire for conquest, had previously aspired to subdue. Yet they also
met with a like opposition. When Pompeius was given an unlimited
command in the East, the appointment was opposed by the Senate, and
when Caesar routed thirty thousand Germans, Cato proposed that he
should be delivered up to the vanquished, and that thus the anger of
the gods should be turned away from the city upon the author of so
great a crime as he had committed by breaking his word. Yet the Romans
slighted Cato's proposals and held a solemn thanksgiving for fifteen
days to show their joy at the news. How many days then must we imagine
they would have spent in rejoicing if Crassus had sent despatches
announcing the capture of Babylon, and then had reduced Media, Persia,
Hyrkania, Susa, and Bactria to the condition of Roman provinces. "If a
man must do wrong," as Euripides says of those who cannot live in
peace, and be contented when they are well off, they should do it on a
grand scale like this, not capture contemptible places like Skandeia
or Mende, or chase the people of AEgina, like birds who have been
turned out of their nests. If we are to do an injustice, let us not do
it in a miserable pettifogging way, but imitate such great examples as
Crassus and Alexander the Great.
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