Legatio Ad Gaium

but this man, on the contrary, loads those who are in good health with disease, and inflicts mutilations on those who are sound, and in short visits the living with most cruel death, caused by the hand of man before the time of their natural death, preparing every imaginable engine of destruction in abundant plenteousness, by means of which, if he had not himself been previously put to death in accordance [*]( This is one of the attributes of Apollo of which he boasts to Daphne. Inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem Dicor et herbarum subjecta potentia nobis: Hic mihi quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis Nec prosunt domino quae prosunt omnibus artes.Met.1.461. Or as it is translated by Dryden— Medicine is mine; what herbs and simples grow In fields and forests, all their powers I know, And am the great physician called below. Alas, that fields and forests can afford No remedies to heal their love-sick lord. To cure the pains of love no plant avails, And his own physic the physician fails. )

with justice, everything glorious or respectable in every city would long ago have been destroyed.