[58]
"I do not speak for the Carthaginians; that would not be fitting. Nor do I forget that they violated other treaties before those which are now under review. What our fathers did in like circumstances (and by which means they arrived at the summit of fortune) I will recall to your minds for you know them already. Although the neighboring peoples round about us often revolted and were continually breaking treaties, our ancestors did not disdain them -- the Latins, the Etruscans, the Sabines, for example. Afterward, the Æqui, the Volsci, the Campanians, also our neighbors, and various other peoples of Italy, committed a breach of their treaties, and our fathers met it magnanimously. Moreover, the Samnite race, after betraying friendship and agreements three times and waging the most desperate war against us for eighty years, were not destroyed, nor were those others who called Pyrrhus into Italy. Nor did we destroy those Italians who lately joined forces with Hannibal, not even the Bruttians, who remained with him to the last. We took from them a part of their lands and allowed them to keep the remainder. Thus it was esteemed both generous to them and useful to us not to exterminate a whole race, but to bring them into a better state of mind.
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
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