metropolis had called you to her assistance against barbarians. And if
I had perceived that your army was composed of men like unto those who
invited them, I had not deemed your attempt so absurd; for nothing
does so much cement the minds of men together as the alliance there is
between their manners. But now for these men who have invited you, if
you were to examine them one by one, every one of them would be found
to have deserved ten thousand deaths; for the very rascality and
offscouring of the whole country, who have spent in debauchery their
own substance, and, by way of trial beforehand, have madly plundered the
neighboring villages and cities, in the upshot of all, have privately
run together into this holy city. They are robbers, who by their
prodigious wickedness have profaned this most sacred floor, and who are
to be now seen drinking themselves drunk in the sanctuary, and expending
the spoils of those whom they have slaughtered upon their unsatiable
bellies. As for the multitude that is with you, one may see them so
decently adorned in their armor, as it would become them to be had their
metropolis called them to her assistance against foreigners. What can a
man call this procedure of yours but the sport of fortune, when he sees
a whole nation coming to protect a sink of wicked wretches? I have for a
good while been in doubt what it could possibly be that should move you
to do this so suddenly; because certainly you would not take on your
armor on the behalf of robbers, and against a people of kin to you,
without some very great cause for your so doing. But we have an item
that the Romans are pretended, and that we are supposed to be going to
betray this city to them; for some of your men have lately made a clamor
about those matters, and have said they are come to set their metropolis
free. Now we cannot but admire at these wretches in their devising
such a lie as this against us; for they knew there was no other way to
irritate against us men that were naturally desirous of liberty, and on
that account the best disposed to fight against foreign enemies, but by
framing a tale as if we were going to betray that most desirable thing,
liberty. But you ought to consider what sort of people they are that
raise this calumny, and against what sort of people that calumny is
raised, and to gather the truth of things, not by fictitious speeches,
but out of the actions of both parties; for what occasion is there for
u