She could suffer only by the wrath of Providence; and, so long
as she continued to be Rome, for many a generation she only of all the
monarchies has feared no mortal hand [Footnote: Unless that hand were her
own armed against herself; upon which topic there is a burst of noble
eloquence in one of the ancient Panegyrici, when haranguing the Emperor
Theodosius: "Thou, Rome! that, having once suffered by the madness of
Cinna, and of the cruel Marius raging from banishment, and of Sylla, that
won his wreath of prosperity from thy disasters, and of Caesar,
compassionate to the dead, didst shudder at every blast of the trumpet
filled by the breath of civil commotion,--thou, that, besides the wreck of
thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst bewail, amongst thy
spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the
heads of thy consuls fixed upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self-
slaughtered Catos, thy headless Ciceros (_truncosque Cicerones_), and
unburied Pompeys;--to whom the party madness of thy own children had
wrought in every age heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy
gates, or the Gaul admitted within thy walls; on whom OEmathia, more fatal
than the day of Allia,--Collina, more dismal than Cannae,--had inflicted
such deep memorials of wounds, that, from bitter experience of thy own
valor, no enemy was to thee so formidable as thyself;--thou, Rome! didst
now for the first time behold a civil war issuing in a hallowed
prosperity, a soldiery appeased, recovered Italy, and for thyself liberty
established.
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