f a treaty
with respect to the weight of gold, they have turned dismay, and flight,
and slaughter.

52. "When you behold such striking instances of the effects of honouring
or neglecting the deity, do you perceive what an act of impiety we are
about to perpetrate, scarcely emerging from the wreck of our former
misconduct and calamity? We possess a city founded under auspices and
auguries; not a spot is there in it that is not full of religious rites
and of the gods: the days for the anniversary sacrifices are not more
definitely stated, than are the places in which they are to be
performed. All these gods, both public and private, do ye, Romans,
pretend to forsake. What similarity does your conduct bear [to that]
which lately during the siege was beheld with no less admiration by the
enemy than by yourselves in that excellent Caius Fabius, when he
descended from the citadel amid the Gallic weapons, and performed on the
Quirinal hill the solemn rites of the Fabian family? Is it your wish
that the family religious rites should not be intermitted even during
war, but that the public rites and the Roman gods should be deserted
even in time of peace, and that the pontiffs and flamens should be more
negligent of public religious ceremonies, than a private individual in
the anniversary rite of a particular family? Perhaps some one may say,
that we will either perform these duties at Veii, or that we will send
our priests hither from thence in order to perform them; neither of
which can be done, without infringing on the established forms. For not
to enumerate all the sacred rites severally and all the gods, whether in
the banquet of Jupiter can the lectisternium be performed in any other
place, save in the Capitol? What shall I say of the eternal fire of
Vesta, and of the statue, which, as the pledge of empire, is kept under
the safeguard of her temple? What, O Mars Gradivus, and you, father
Quirinus, of your Ancilia? Is it right that these sacred things, coeval
with the city, some of them more ancient than the origin of the city,
should be abandoned to profanation? And, observe the difference existing
between us and our ancestors. They handed down to us certain sacred
rites to be performed by us on the Alban and on the Lavinian mounts. Was
it in conformity with religion that these sacred rites were transferred
to us to Rome from the cities of our enemies? shall we transfer them
hence to Veii, an enemy's city, without impiety?