fatal blade upon the accursed anvil, although the smiths of yore were wont to fashion only mattocks and hoes, and to weary themselves with making pick and ploughshare, and knew not how to hammer out the sword. We see whole nations now, whose wrath mere murder does not satisfy,-men who have come to regard their victim's chest, and arms, and face as a variety of food. What would Pythagoras then say, or whither would he not take flight, if he saw such horrors as these to-day; he who abstained from all brutes' flesh as if it were man's, nor even indulged his belly with every kind of pulse?

XVI

WHO, Gallius, could enumerate the advantages of lucky soldiering? Why, if only I can enter a crack regiment, then let the camp-gate give welcome to a bashful recruit like myself-but may it be beneath a lucky star! For greater in its influence is one hour of favouring fortune than an introduction to Mars by a letter from Venus, or by that mother of his, who loves the sands of Samos.

First, let us touch on the privileges that all soldiers enjoy. This will prove not the least of them—that

no citizen would venture to thrash you; nay, should he be thrashed, he would hush it up, nor venture to show the Praetor his knocked-out teeth, his face, all one dark, livid, swollen mass, and his eye still in its place, indeed, but despaired of1 by his doctor. And, if he would get redress for this, the judge assigned him is a soldier's boot and burly calves to suit the capacious bench,2 for the old martial law and the rules of Camillus are observed, that no soldier shall be a litigant outside the camp nor far from the standards. So there is to be a thoroughly fair trial of the soldier's case by the Centurions; nor shall I fail to get satisfaction if a fair ground of complaint be presented.' Nay, but the whole battalion is opposed to you, and all the companies, acting in perfect concert, take good care that the redress you get shall need a doctor's treatment, too, and prove a greater grievance even than the wrong. And so it would be worthy of the mulish wits of that ranter Vagellius, seeing you have but two legs, to fall foul of so many soldiers' boots, and so many thousand soldiers' spikes. Besides this, who would go all that way from Town? Who would be such a Pylades, as to venture beyond the big Embankment ? Dried be our tears at once, and let us not worry our friends, who are sure to make excuses. When the judge says, 'Produce your witness,' let the one who saw the fisticuffs, any chance bystander, dare to say,

'I saw it,' and I will deem him worthy the beard, worthy the long locks of the men of old. You could more readily bring forward a false witness against a civilian than a truthful one to hurt the pocket or to hurt the honour of a man-at-arms.

Now, let us look at other prizes and other gains from the oath of enlistment. Say an unscrupulous neighbour has filched from me a glade or meadow of my family lands, and dug up from the middle of the boundary-line the sacred stone, which my beans and flat cake have yearly honoured, or a debtor persists in not repaying the cash he borrowed, saying the signature is forged and the tablets worthless, I have to wait for that indefinite time that is to begin the suits of the whole of Rome. And even then we must put up with a thousand delays, a thousand hindrances; so often does a cushion only occupy the Bench! And, even while Caedicius the Eloquent is putting off his cloak, and Fuscus is getting ready, we have to part, though fully equipped for battle, and so we wage our strife in the Court's wearisome arena. But for the men whom armour clothes and baldric girds, the time that suits themselves is the time appointed for the pleading, nor is their substance worn away by the Law's tedious drag.

Besides, to soldiers only is the right allowed of making bequests during a father's lifetime; for what is earned by military service the Law directs

shall form no part of that property of which the father has entire control. And so Coranus, who marches with the standards, and earns regimental pay, is courted for his fortune by his own father, though now palsied with age. Well-merited favour gives the soldier his promotion, and pays the due reward to his honest efforts. Clearly it seems the interest of the General himself that the brave man should likewise be the most lucky: that all may pride themselves on their decorations, and all on their golden collars.

K