1When, after watching a number of pairs, he had dismissed them in this frame of mind, he then called an assembly and is said to have spoken to them as follows: 'If you show presently, in judging your own fortune, the same spirit that you showed a little while ago at the example of another's lot, we have won, soldiers; 2for that was not merely a spectacle but, as it were, a kind of image of your own condition. 3And I am not sure that fortune has not bound you with greater chains and harsher necessities than your captives: on the right and left two seas shut you in, and you have not a single ship even for escape; around you is the river Po, greater and more violent than the Rhône; behind you press the Alps, which you crossed barely when you were fresh and vigorous.
5Here, soldiers, where you have first met the enemy, you must conquer or die. 5And the same fortune that has laid on you the necessity of fighting holds out to you, if you win, rewards such that men do not usually pray for greater even from the immortal gods. 6If we were only going to recover by our courage Sicily and Sardinia, which were snatched from our fathers, the prizes would still be ample enough: but whatever the Romans possess, won and amassed in so many triumphs, all of it is going to be yours, together with its very owners. 7To win this rich reward, come then, take up your arms, with the gods' good help.
8Long enough have you chased flocks in the vast mountains of Lusitania and Celtiberia and seen no profit from all your toils and dangers; 9it is time now for you to serve rich and wealthy campaigns and to earn great rewards for your labour, now that you have travelled so long a road through so many mountains and rivers and so many armed nations. 10Here fortune has given you the end of your toils; 10here she will give you a worthy reward when your service is done. 11And do not suppose that victory will be as difficult as the war is great in name: often a despised enemy has produced a bloody contest, and famous peoples and kings have been defeated with the slightest effort.
12For take away this one glitter of the Roman name, and what is there in which they are to be compared with you? 13To say nothing of your twenty years of service, with that valour of yours and that fortune, you have come here from the Pillars of Hercules, from the Ocean and the farthest bounds of the earth, victorious through so many of the fiercest peoples of Spain and Gaul; 14you will fight with an army of recruits, which this very summer was cut to pieces, beaten and besieged by the Gauls, still unknown to its general and not knowing him. Or am I, who was almost born, and certainly brought up, in the headquarters tent of my father, a most illustrious commander, I, the conqueror of Spain and Gaul, the victor likewise not only of the Alpine tribes but, what is far greater, of the Alps themselves, to compare myself with this six-month general, the deserter of his own army?
16If anyone were to show him the Carthaginians and the Romans today with their standards removed, I am certain that he would not know of which army he is consul. 17I do not count it a small thing, soldiers, that there is not one of you before whose eyes I have not myself often performed some feat of arms, and none to whom I, the spectator and witness of his courage, cannot recount his own distinctions, noted with their times and places. 18With men whom I have praised and rewarded a thousand times, I, the foster-child of you all before I was your commander, shall advance into battle against men unknown to and ignorant of each other.