[98]
To encounter voluntarily such great grief of mind, and by oneself to endure,
while the city is standing, those things which, when a city is taken, befall
the conquered citizens; to see oneself torn from the embrace of one's
friends, one's houses destroyed, one's property plundered; above all for the
sake of one's country, to lose one's country itself to be stripped of the
most honourable favours of the Roman people, to be precipitated from the
highest rank of dignity, to see one's enemies in their robes of office
demanding to conduct one's funeral before one's death has been properly
mourned;—to undergo all these troubles for the sake of saving
one's fellow-citizens, and this with such feelings that you are miserable
while absent, not being as wise as those philosophers who care for nothing,
but being as attached to one's relations and to oneself as the common
feelings and rights of men require,—that is illustrious and
godlike glory. For he who with a calm spirit for the sake of the republic
abandons those things which he has never considered dear or delightful is
not showing any remarkable good will towards the republic but he who
abandons those things for the sake of the republic from which he is not torn
without the greatest agony, his country is dear to that man and he prefers
her safety to his affection for his own relations.
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