[-18-] “I speak to you who know these facts and make you who hear them my witnesses not in the intention of uttering idle boasts about myself,—­your consciousness of the truth being sufficient glory for me,—­but to the end that you may in this way bring home to yourselves how much better we are equipped than our opponents.  For, while they are inferior to us in quantity both of soldiers and of money and in diversity of equipment, in no one respect are they so strikingly lacking as in the age and inexperience of their general.  About him I need in general make no exact or detailed statement, but to sum up I will say this, which you all understand, that he is a veritable weakling in body and has never himself been victor in any important battle either on land or on the sea.  Indeed, at Phillipi and in the same conflict I won the day, whereas he was defeated.

“To this degree do we differ from each other, and usually victories fall to the better equipped.  And if they have any strength at all, you would find it to exist in their heavy-armed force on land; as for their ships, they will not so much as be able to sail out against us.  You yourselves can of course see the size and stoutness of our vessels, which are such that if the enemy’s were equivalent to them in number, yet because of these advantages the foe could do no damage either by charges from the side or by charges from the front.  For first the thickness of the timbers and second the very height of the ships would certainly check them, even if there were no one on board to defend them.  Where will any one find a chance to assail ships which carry so many archers and slingers striking assailants, moreover, from the towers up aloft?  If any one should approach, how could he fail to get sunk by the very number of the oars or how could he fail to be plunged under water when shot at by all the warriors on the decks and in the towers? [-19-] Do not think that they have any nautical ability because Agrippa won a sea-fight off Sicily:  they contended not against Sextus but against his slaves, not against a like equipment with ours but against one far inferior.  If, again, any one makes much of their good fortune in that combat, he is bound to take into equal consideration the defeat which Caesar himself suffered at the hands of Sextus.  By this comparison he will find that conditions are not the same, but that all our advantages are more numerous and greater than theirs.  And, in general, how large a part does Sicily form of the whole empire and how large a fraction of our equipment did the troops of Sextus possess, that any one should properly fear Caesar’s armament, which is precisely the same as before and has grown neither larger nor better, just on account of his good luck, instead of taking courage from the defeat that he endured?  Reflecting on this fact I have not cared to risk our first engagement with the infantry, where they appear to have strength in a way, in order that no one of