Legatio Ad Gaium

"Do you suppose (may God forbid that any such event should ever take place) that if any of our countrymen were to see this statue being brought into our temple, it would not change them into stones? Their limbs being all congealed, and their eyes becoming fixed so as not to be capable of motion, and their whole body losing all its natural motions in every one of its united parts and limbs!

We will, however, now, O Petronius, address to you one last and most righteous and just request; we say that you ought not to do what you are commanded, but we entreat you to grant us a respite, and we most earnestly supplicate you to delay a little while till we appoint an embassy, and send it to approach your master, and to convey our entreaties to him.

Perhaps in our embassy we may find some argument or other to persuade him, either by bringing before him all the considerations respecting the honour of God, or the preservation of our indestructible and unalterable laws, or by urging upon him that we ought not to be subjected to a worse fate than all the nations even in the very most remote extremities of the earth, who have been allowed to preserve their national customs; with reference to which his grandfather and great-grandfather came to a righteous decision when they confirmed and set the seal to our customs with all care.

Perhaps when he hears these arguments he will be more merciful to us. The intentions of the great do not always continue the same, and those which are adopted in anger are the quickest to change. We have been grievously calumniated. Suffer us to refute the false accusations which