The immediate burdens of empire are born by the conquered subjects, but in the long run it has the people of the imperial nation that find themselves overtaxed to support the endless wars and swamped by subject peoples, allies, or just about anyone who can get to the frontier.
It is a main thrust of philosophical Liberalism (and of ancient Stoicism) that human beings have a duty to rise above not only animal but parochial and sectarian passions. Any attempt to justify revenge must therefore represent a step back toward the jungle from which we escaped all too recently.
Cicero is, in fact, one of the most important figures in our tradition: statesman and orator, rhetorical theorist, public philosopher, and a writer of marvelous letters that still give us a candid picture of insider politics that is unmatched to this day.
