1I think I have said enough about why this war is by its very nature necessary and by its scale dangerous. 1It remains, it seems, to speak about choosing a commander for that war and putting him in charge of such great affairs. 1I wish, citizens, that you had so great a supply of brave and upright men that this deliberation would be difficult for you, whom above all you thought should be put in charge of such great affairs and so great a war! 1But as things are, since Pompey is the one man who has surpassed in merit not only the glory of the men of today but even the memory of antiquity, what is there that could make anyone's mind doubtful in this case?
28For my view is this, that a supreme commander ought to possess these four qualities: knowledge of warfare, ability, authority and good fortune. 28Who, then, has ever been, or ought to have been, more knowledgeable than this man? 28He went from school and the training of boyhood, in a very great war and against the fiercest enemies, to his father's army and to the discipline of military service; at the very end of boyhood he was a soldier in the army of a supreme commander, and at the start of manhood was himself commander of a very great army; he has clashed with the enemy more often than anyone has quarrelled with a personal opponent, has waged more wars than others have read of, has subdued more provinces than others have coveted; his youth was trained in the knowledge of warfare not by the precepts of others but by his own commands, not by defeats in war but by victories, not by campaigns but by triumphs.
28What kind of war, in short, can there be in which the fortune of the state has not exercised him? 28Civil war, African, Transalpine, Spanish — a mixture of citizens and the most warlike nations — the slave war, the naval war: these varied and different kinds both of wars and of enemies, not only waged by this one man but also brought to an end, declare that there is nothing within military experience that could escape this man's knowledge.