1'If you had a colleague like yourself, Lucius Aemilius, which I would prefer, or if you were like your colleague, my speech would be superfluous; 2for as two good consuls you would do everything in the interest of the state and of your own good faith even without my telling you, and as bad ones you would take neither my words into your ears nor my advice into your minds. 3As it is, when I look at your colleague and at you, such a man as you are, my whole speech is with you, who I see will be a good man and a good citizen in vain, if, with the state lame on one side, bad counsels have the same right and power as good.
4For you are mistaken, Lucius Paulus, if you think you will have less of a struggle with Gaius Terentius than with Hannibal; 4I rather think this adversary awaits you more hostile than that enemy, since you will contend with the latter only in the battle line, with the former in every place and at every time, and against Hannibal and his legions you must fight with your own cavalry and infantry, while Varro as commander will attack you with your own soldiers. 5For the omen's sake, too, let the memory of Gaius Flaminius be far from you. 6Yet he began to rage only once he was consul, in his province and with the army; 6this man has been raving since before he sought the consulship, then while seeking it, and now too as consul, before he sees the camp or the enemy.
7And one who even now stirs up such storms among men in togas by boasting of battles and battle lines, what do you think he will do among young men in arms, and where action follows words at once? 8And yet, if he fights at once, as he declares he will, either I know nothing of warfare, of this kind of war, of this enemy, or some other place will be more famous than Trasimene for our disasters. 9This is no time for boasting in front of one man, and, if anything, I have gone too far in despising glory rather than in seeking it; 9but this is how the matter stands: there is one way of waging war against Hannibal, the way I waged it.
10Nor is it only the outcome that teaches this — that is the teacher of fools — ; 10but the same reasoning that has held will hold, unchangeable, as long as circumstances remain the same. 11We are waging war in Italy, on our own home and soil; 11everything around us is full of citizens and allies; 11they help us and will help us with arms, men, horses and supplies: they have already given this proof of their loyalty in our adversity; 12time and each day make us better, wiser, steadier; 12Hannibal, on the other hand, is in a foreign land, an enemy land, amid everything unfriendly and hostile, far from home, from his country; 13for him there is no peace on land or sea; 13no cities receive him, no walls; 14nowhere does he see anything of his own; 14he lives from day to day on plunder; 14he has scarcely a third of the army with which he crossed the river Ebro; 14more have been carried off by hunger than by the sword, and even for these few there is no longer food enough.
15Do you doubt, then, that by sitting still we shall overcome a man who is wasting away by the day, who has no supplies, no reinforcements, no money? 16How long has he been sitting before Gereonium, a poor fort in Apulia, as though before the walls of Carthage? 16But not even before you will I boast of myself: see how Servilius and Atilius, the last consuls, made a fool of him. 17This is the one road to safety, Lucius Paulus, and your fellow citizens rather than the enemy will make it hard and dangerous for you. 18For your soldiers will want the same as the enemy's, and Varro the Roman consul will desire the same as Hannibal the Carthaginian general.
18You alone must resist two commanders. 18And you will resist, if you stand firm enough against men's talk and rumours, if neither your colleague's empty glory nor your own false disrepute moves you. 19They say that truth is too often hard-pressed but never extinguished: whoever scorns empty glory will have true glory; let them call you timid instead of cautious, slow instead of deliberate, unwarlike instead of skilled in war. 20I would rather a wise enemy feared you than foolish citizens praised you. 20Hannibal will despise a man who dares everything, and fear one who does nothing rashly; nor do I advise that nothing be done, but that in action reason guide you, not fortune; 21may you and all that is yours always be in your own power; 21be armed and alert; 21neither fail your own opportunity nor give the enemy his.
21To one who does not hurry, everything will be clear and certain; 22haste is improvident and blind.'