on the other hand, the terror of our name is such that no weariness of a protracted siege, no severity of winter, can dislodge a Roman army from any city which it has once invested, that it knows no close to a war but victory, and that it conducts its campaigns by perseverance as much as by dash?
Perseverance is necessary in every kind of military operation, but especially in the conduct of sieges, for the majority of cities are impregnable, owing to the strength of their fortifications and their position, and time itself conquers them with hunger and thirst, and captures them as it will capture Veii unless the tribunes of the plebs extend their protection to the enemy and the Veientines find in Rome the support which they are vainly seeking in Etruria.
Can anything happen to the Veientines more in accordance with their wishes than that the City of Rome should be filled with sedition and the contagion of it spread to the camp?
But amongst the enemy there is actually so much respect for law and order that they have not been goaded into
revolution either by weariness of the siege or even aversion to absolute monarchy, nor have they shown exasperation at the refusal of succours by Etruria. The man who advocates sedition will be put to death on the spot, and no one will be allowed to say the things which are uttered amongst you with impunity.
With us the man who deserts his standard or abandons his post is liable to be cudgelled to
death, but those who urge the men to abandon the standards and desert from the camp are listened to, not by one or two only; they have the whole army for an audience.
To such an extent have you habituated yourselves to listen calmly to whatever a tribune of the plebs may say, even if it means the betrayal of your country and the destruction of the republic. Captivated by the attraction which that office has for you, you allow all sorts of mischief to lurk under its shadow.
The one thing left for them is to bring forward in the camp, before the soldiers, the same arguments which they have so loudly urged here, and so corrupt the army that they will not allow it to obey its commanders.
For evidently liberty in Rome simply means that the soldiers cease to feel any reverence for either the senate, or the magistrates, or the laws, or the traditions of their ancestors, or the institutions of their fathers, or military discipline.”
Appius