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This Book List Sectory 23
Page 04
We crossed two streamlets flowing north. After that we came upon a most troublesome patch of swampy land with high reeds in it, the leaves of which cut our hands like razors when we forced our way through them, struggling in mud and slush up to our knees, sometimes as high as our waists. A streamlet flowing north formed the marsh in that low place. The moment we had got out of the marsh the men threw themselves down and said they could go no farther. I pointed out to them that that spot was most unhealthy, and tried to persuade them to go some distance from that pestilential place. But they would not listen to reason, and there they would stay.
It is certain that sedentary, and within-door arts, and delicate manufactures (that require rather the finger than the arm), have, in their nature, a contrariety to a military disposition. And generally, all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger better than travail. Neither must they be too much broken of it, if they shall be preserved in vigor. Therefore it was great advantage, in the ancient states of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and others, that they had the use of slaves, which commonly did rid those manufactures. But that is abolished, in greatest part, by the Christian law. That which cometh nearest to it, is to leave those arts chiefly to strangers (which, for that purpose, are the more easily to be received), and to contain the principal bulk of the vulgar natives, within those three kinds, - tillers of the ground; free servants; and handicraftsmen of strong and manly arts, as smiths, masons, carpenters, etc.; not reckoning professed soldiers.
Next day the adjourned Assembly met on the Capitol in the open space in front of the Temple of Jupiter. The Senate also assembled in the Temple of Faith close by. Scipio Nasica, the leader of the more violent party in the Senate, called upon the Consul Mucius Scaevola to stop the re-election, but the Consul declined to interfere. Fulvius Flaccus, a Senator, and a friend of Tiberius, hastened to inform him of the speech of Nasica, and told him that his death was resolved upon. Thereupon the friends of Tiberius prepared to resist force by force; and as those at a distance could not hear him, on account of the tumult and confusion, the Tribune pointed with his hand to his head, to intimate that his life was in danger. His enemies exclaimed that he was asking for the crown.
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