Even
if I had to relate foreign wars and deaths encountered in the service of the
State with such a monotony of disaster, I should myself have been overcome
by disgust, while I should look for weariness in my readers, sickened as
they would be by the melancholy and continuous destruction of our citizens,
however glorious to themselves. But now a servile submissiveness and so much
wanton bloodshed at home fatigue the mind and paralyze it with grief. The
only
indulgence I would ask
from those who will acquaint themselves with these horrors is that I be not
thought to hate men who perished so tamely. Such was the wrath of heaven
against the Roman State that one may not pass over it with a single mention,
as one might the defeat of armies and the capture of cities. Let us grant
this privilege to the posterity of illustrious men, that just as in their
funeral obsequies such men are not confounded in a common burial, so in the
record of their end they may receive and retain a special memorial.
