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But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters
which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those
discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil
interests. The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood
was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another, not
with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force and
arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and
devastations were occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile
wars civil! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome,
all the animals used in the service of man, dogs, horses, asses,
oxen, and all the rest that are subject to man, suddenly grew wild,
and forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and
wandered at large, and could not be closely approached either by
strangers or their own masters without danger. If this was a portent,
how serious a calamity must have been portended by a plague which,
whether portent or no, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it
happened in our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us
than their animals were against them.
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