Ab urbe condita

Look at the alternations of prosperity and adversity during these late years; you will find that all went well with us when we followed the divine guidance, and all was disastrous when we neglected it.

Take first of all the war with Veii. For what a number of years and with what immense exertions it was carried on! It did not come to an end before the water was drawn off from the Alban Lake at the bidding of the gods.

What, again, of this unparalleled disaster to our City? Did it burst upon us before the Voice sent from heaven announcing the approach of the Gauls was treated with contempt, before the law of nations had been outraged by our ambassadors, before we had, in the same irreligious spirit, condoned that outrage when we ought to have punished it?

And so it was that, defeated, captured, ransomed, we received such punishment at the hands of gods and men that we were a lesson to the whole world. Then, in our adversity, we bethought us of our religious duties.

We fled to the gods in the Capitol, to the seat of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; amidst the ruin of all that we possessed we concealed some of the sacred treasures in the earth, the rest we carried out of the enemies' sight to neighbouring cities; abandoned as we were by gods and men, we still did not intermit the divine worship.

It is because we acted thus that they have restored to us our native City, and victory and the renown in war which we had lost; but against the enemy, who, blinded by avarice, broke treaty and troth in the weighing of the gold, they have launched terror and rout and death.”

“When you see such momentous consequences for human affairs flowing from the worship or the neglect of the gods, do you not realise, Quirites, how great a sin we are meditating whilst hardly yet emerging from the shipwreck caused by our former guilt and fall?

We possess a City which was founded with the divine approval as revealed in auguries and auspices; in it there is not a spot which is not full of religious associations and the presence of a god; the regular sacrifices have their appointed places no less than they have their appointed days.