Ab urbe condita

Are we growing tired of keeping up a siege for one year, not twenty miles off, almost within sight of the City? I suppose you think the reason for the war is a trivial one, and we do not feel enough just resentment to urge us to persevere.

Seven times have they recommenced war against us; they have never loyally kept to the terms of peace; they have ravaged our fields a thousand times; they forced the Fidenates to revolt;

they slew the colonists whom we settled there; they instigated the impious murder of our ambassadors in violation of the law of nations; they wanted to raise the whole of Etruria against us, and they are trying to do so today; when we sent ambassadors to demand satisfaction, they very nearly outraged them.”

“Are these the men with whom war ought to be carried on in a half-hearted and dilatory fashion? If such just reasons for resentment have no force with us, do not the following considerations, I pray you, possess any weight?

The city is hemmed in by immense siege-works which confine the enemy within his walls. He has not tilled his land, and what was tilled before has been devastated by war.