For
kindred arms and brotherly battalions and common standards,[375] and
the manhood and the might of a single state in such numbers, were
closing in battle, self-matched against self, an example of the
blindness of human nature and its madness, under the influence of
passion. For if they had now been satisfied quietly to govern and
enjoy what they had got, there was the largest and the best portion of
the earth and of the sea subject to them; and if they still wished to
gratify their love of trophies and of triumphs, and their thirst for
them, they might have their fill of Parthian or German wars. Scythia,
too, and the Indians were a labour in reserve, and ambition had a
reasonable pretext for such undertaking, the civilization of barbaric
nations. And what Scythian horse, or Parthian arrows, or Indian wealth
could have checked seventy thousand Romans advancing in arms under
Pompeius and Caesar, whose name these nations heard of long before they
heard of the name of Rome? Such unsociable, and various, and savage
nations had they invaded and conquered. But now they engaged with one
another in battle, without even feeling any compunction about their
own glory, for which they spared not their native country, up to this
day having always borne the name of invincible. For the relationship
that had been made between them, and the charms of Julia, and that
marriage, were from the very first only deceitful and suspected
pledges of an alliance formed from interested motives, in which there
was not a particle of true friendship.
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