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If the famous Scipio Nasica were now alive, who was once your
pontiff, and was unanimously chosen by the senate, when, in the panic
created by the Punic war, they sought for the best citizen to
entertain the Phrygian goddess, he would curb this shamelessness of
yours, though you would perhaps scarcely dare to look upon the
countenance of such a man. For why in your calamities do you complain
of Christianity, unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious
license unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life
without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For certainly
your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by
any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with
moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather
is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to
generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a
thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a
calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in
the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to
the destruction of Carthage, Rome's rival and opposed Cato, who
advised its destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak
minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian
for the citizens. And he was not mistaken; the event proved how
wisely he had spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the
Roman republic delivered from its great cause of anxiety, a crowd of
disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous condition of
things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed by fierce and
bloody seditions; then followed, by a concatenation of baleful
causes, civil wars, which brought in their train such massacres, such
bloodshed, such lawless and cruel proscription and plunder, that those
Romans who, in the days of their virtue, had expected injury only at
the hands of their enemies, now that their virtue was lost, suffered
greater cruelties at the hands of their fellow-citizens. The lust of
rule, which with other vices existed among the Romans in more
unmitigated intensity than among any other people, after it had taken
possession of the more powerful few, subdued under its yoke the rest,
worn and wearied.
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