Latin Texts & Translations

ch. 59

At present, then, all those things which might appear more insignificant, I will on that account pass over—how he took away Delphic tables made of marble, beautiful goblets of brass, an immense number of Corinthian vases, out of every saved temple at Syracuse;

2.4.132 and therefore, O judges, those men who are accustomed to take strangers about to all those things which are worth going to see, and to show them every separate thing, whom they call mystagogi, (or cicerones,) now have their description of things reversed; for as they formerly used to show what there was in every place, so now they show what has been taken from every place.

What do you think, then? Do you think that those men are affected with but a moderate indignation? Not so, O judges: in the first place, because all men are influenced by religious feeling, and think that their paternal gods, whom they have received from their ancestors, are to be carefully worshipped and retained by themselves; and secondly, because this sort of ornament, these works and specimens of art, these statues and paintings, delight men of Greek extraction to an excessive degree; therefore by their complaints we can understand that these things appear most bitter to those men, which perhaps may seem trifling and contemptible to us. Believe me, O judges, although I am aware to a certainty that you yourselves hear the same things, that though both our allies and foreign nations have during these past years sustained many calamities and injuries, yet men of Greek extraction have not been, and are not, more indignant at any than at this ruthless plundering of their temples and altars.

2.4.133 Although that man may say that he bought these things, as he is accustomed to say, yet, believe me in this, O judges,—no city in all Asia or in all Greece has ever sold one statue, one picture, or one decoration of the city, of its own free will to anybody. Unless, perchance, you suppose that, after strict judicial decisions had ceased to take place at Rome, the Greeks then began to sell these things, which they not only did not sell when there were courts of justice open, but which they even used to buy up; or unless you think that Lucius Crassus, Quintus Scaevola, Caius Claudius, most, powerful men, whose most splendid aedileships we have seen had no dealings in those sort of matters with the Greeks, but that those men had such dealings who became aediles after the destruction of the courts of justice.

ch. 60

2.4.134

Know also that that false presence of purchase was more bitter to the cities than if any one were privately to filch things, or boldly to steal them and carry them off. For they think it the most excessive baseness, that it should be entered on the public records that the city was induced by a price, and by a small price too, to sell and alienate those things which it had received from men of old. In truth, the Greeks delight to a marvellous degree in those things, which we despise. And therefore our ancestors willingly allowed those things to remain in numbers among the allies, in order that they might be as splendid and as flourishing as possible under our dominion; and among those nations whom they rendered taxable or tributary, ^[Note] still they left these things, in order that they who take delight in those things which to us seem insignificant, might have them as pleasures and consolations in slavery.

2.4.135 What do you think that the Rhegians, who now are Roman citizens, would take to allow that marble Venus to be taken from them? What would the Tarentines take to lose the Europa sitting on the Bull? or the Satyr which they have in the temple of Vesta? or their other monuments? What would the Thespians take to lose the statue of Cupid, the only object for which any one ever goes to see Thespiae? What would the men of Cnidos take for their marble Venus? or the Coans for their picture of her? or the Ephesians for Alexander? the men of Cyzicus for their Ajax or Medea? What would the Rhodians take for Ialysus? the Athenians for their marble Bacchus, or their picture of Paralus, or their brazen Heifer, the work of Myron? It would be a long business and an unnecessary one, to mention what is worth going to see among all the different nations in all Asia and Greece; but that is the reason why I am enumerating these things, because I wish you to consider that an incredible indignation must be the feeling of those men from whose cities these things are carried away.

ch. 61