in his Life of Agricola, puts into the mouth of Galgacus the following oration, when he was animating the Caledonians to their last battle with the Romans under Agricola.
"As often as I reflect on the origin of the war, and our necessities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your will, are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For we have all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies behind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet hovers around. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the brave, are now the only refuge of the cowardly. In former actions, in which the Britons fought with various success against the Romans, our valour was a resource to look to, for we, the noblest of all the nation, and on that account placed in its inmost recesses, unused to the spectacle of servitude, had our eyes even inviolate from its hateful sight. We, the last of the earth, and of freedom, unknown to fame, have been hitherto defended by our remoteness; now, the extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever regarded as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have in vain sought to deprecate by moderation and subservience. The robbers of the globe, when the land fails they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor, they are ambitious – the East and the West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, massacre, seize on false pretences, they call empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace.
"Nature has made children and relations dearest to all: they are carried off by levies to serve elsewhere: our wives and sisters, if they escape the lust of our enemies, are seduced by these friends and guests. Our goods and fortunes they seize on as tribute, our corn as supplies; our very bodies and hands they wear out amidst strifes and contumely, in fortifying stations in the woods and marshes. Serfs born in servitude are once bought, and ever after fed by their masters; Britain alone daily buys its slavery, daily feeds it. As in families the last slave purchased is often a laughing-stock to the rest, so we, the last whom they have reduced to slavery, are the first to be agonised by their contumely, and reserved for destruction. We have neither fields, nor minerals, nor harbours, in working which we can be employed: the valour and fierceness of the vanquished are obnoxious to the victors: our very distance and obscurity, as they render us the safer, make us the more suspected. Laying aside, therefore, all hope of pardon, assume the courage of men to whom salvation and glory are alike dear. The Trinobantes, under a female leader, had courage to burn a colony and storm castles, and, had not their success rendered them negligent, they would have cast off the yoke. We, untouched and unconquered, nursed in freedom, shall we not show, on the first onset, what men Caledonia has nursed in her bosom?
"Do not believe the Romans have the same prowess in war as lust in peace. They have grown great on our divisions: they know how to turn the vices of men to the glory of their own army. As it has been drawn together by success, so disaster will dissolve it, unless you suppose that the Gauls and the Germans, and, I am ashamed to say, many of the Britons, who now lend their blood to a foreign usurpation, and in their hearts are rather enemies than slaves, can be retained by faith and affection. Fear and terror are but slender bonds of attachment; when you remove them, as fear ceases terror begins. All the incitements of victory are on our side: no wives inflame the Romans; no parents are there, to call shame on their flight; they have no country, or it is elsewhere. Few in number, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown woods and seas, the gods have delivered them shut in and bound into your hands. Let not their vain aspect, the glitter of silver and gold, which neither covers nor wounds, alarm you. In the very line of the enemy we shall find our friends: the Britons will recognise their own cause; the Gauls will recollect their former freedom; the other Germans will desert them, as lately the Usipii have done. No objects of terror are behind them; naught but empty castles, age-ridden colonies; dissension between cruel masters and unwilling slaves, sick and discordant cities. Here is a leader, an army; there are tributes, and payments, and the badges of servitude, which to bear for ever, or instantly to avenge, lies in your arms. Go forth then into the field, and think of your ancestors and your descendants."9
It is scarcely necessary to say that this speech was written by Tacitus: most certainly nothing half so perfect was ever conceived by Caledonian chief or Caledonian orator, from that day to this. But as the great speeches in antiquity were all written, this gives a specimen, doubtless of the most favourable kind, of the style of oratory which prevailed amongst them. No modern historian has either ventured or been able to put anything so nervous and forcible into the mouth of any orator, how great soever. If he did, it would at once be known that it had not been spoken, but was the fruit of the composition of the closet.
Catiline, who, like many other revolutionists, possessed abilities commensurate to his wickedness, thus addressed the conspirators who were associated to overturn the sway of the Roman patricians: —
"Had not your valour and fidelity been well known to me, fruitless would have been the smiles of Fortune: the prospect of as mighty domination would in vain have opened upon us; nor would I have mistaken illusive hopes for realities, uncertain things for certain. But since, on many and great occasions, I have known you to be brave and faithful, I have ventured to engage in the greatest and noblest undertaking; for I well know that good and evil are common to you and me. That friendship at length is secure which is founded on wishing and dreading the same things. You all know what designs I have long revolved in my mind; but my confidence in them daily increases, when I reflect what our fate is likely to be, if we do not vindicate our freedom by our own hands. For, since the republic has fallen under the power and dominion of a few, kings yield their tributes, governorships their profits to them: all the rest, whether strenuous, good, noble or ignoble, are the mere vulgar: without influence, without authority, we are obnoxious to those to whom, if the commonwealth existed, we should be a terror. All honour, favour, power, wealth, is centred in them, or those whom they favour: to us are left dangers, repulses, lawsuits, poverty. How long will you endure them, O ye bravest of men? Is it not better to die bravely, than drag out a miserable and dishonoured life, the sport of pride, the victims of disgrace? But by the faith of gods and men, victory is in our own hands: our strength is unimpaired; our minds energetic: theirs is enfeebled by age, extinguished by riches. All that is required is to begin boldly; the rest follows of course. Where is the man of a manly spirit, who can tolerate that they should overflow with riches, which they squander in ransacking the sea, in levelling mountains, while to us the common necessaries of life are awanting? They have two or more superb palaces each; we not wherein to lay our heads. When they buy pictures, statues, basso-relievos, they destroy the old to make way for the new: in every possible way they squander away their money; but all their desires are unable to exhaust their riches. At home, we have only poverty; abroad, debts; present adversity; worse prospects. What, in fine, is left us, but our woe-stricken souls? What, then, shall we do? That, that which you have ever most desired. Liberty is before your eyes; and it will soon bring riches, renown, glory: Fortune holds out these rewards to the victors. The time, the place, our dangers, our wants, the splendid spoils of war, exhort you more than my words. Make use of me either as a commander or a private soldier. Neither in soul or body will I be absent from your side. These deeds I hope I shall perform as Consul with you, unless my hopes deceive me, and you are prepared rather to obey as slaves, than to command as rulers."10
The topics here handled are the same which in every age have been the staple of the conspirator and the revolutionist; but it may be doubted whether they ever were put together with such force and address. The same desperate chief, on the eve of their last conflict with the consular legions: —
"I well know, fellow-soldiers, that words add nothing to the valour of the brave; and that an army will not be made from slothful, strenuous – from timid, courageous, by any speech from its commander. Whatever boldness nature or training has implanted in any one, that appears in war. It is vain to exhort those whom neither dangers nor glory excite. Terror shuts their ears. But I have called you together to mention a few things, and to make you sharers of my councils. You know, soldiers, what a calamity has been brought upon us by the cowardice of Lentulus; and how, when I awaited succours
Sallust,
