39.16
"The
mischief would not be serious, if they had only lost their manhood through
their debauchery -the disgrace would fall mainly upon themselves -and had
kept from open outrage and secret treason. Never has there been such a
gigantic evil in the commonwealth, or one which has affected greater
numbers or caused more numerous crimes. Whatever instances of lust,
treachery, or crime have occurred during these last years, have originated,
you may be perfectly certain, in that shrine of unhallowed rites. They have
not yet disclosed all the criminal objects of their conspiracy. So far, their
impious association confines itself to individual crimes; it has not yet
strength enough to destroy the commonwealth. But the evil is creeping
stealthily on, and growing day by day; it is already too great to limit its
action to individual citizens; it looks to be supreme in the State. Unless,
Quirites, you take precautions, this Assembly legally convened by a consul in
the daylight will be confronted by another assembly gathered together in the
darkness of the night. Now they, disunited, fear you, a united Assembly, but
when you are dispersed to your homes and your farms they will hold their
assembly and plot their own safety and your ruin. It will then be your turn,
scattered as you will be, to fear them in their united strength.
"You ought, therefore, every one of you, to pray that your friends
may have preserved their good sense. If unbridled and maddening lust has
swept any one away into that whirlpool, you must judge him as belonging
not to you but to those whom he has joined as fellow-conspirators in every
kind of wickedness. I do not feel sure that even some of you may not have
been misled. For there is nothing which wears a more deceptive appearance
than a depraved superstition. Where crimes are sheltered under the name of
religion, there is fear lest in punishing the hypocrisy of men we are doing
violence to something holy which is mixed up with it. From these scruples
you are delivered by numberless decisions of the pontiffs, resolutions of the
senate and responses of the augurs. How often in the times of your fathers
and grandfathers has the task been assigned to the magistrates of forbidding
all foreign rites and ceremonies, prohibiting hedge-priests and diviners from
entering either the Forum, the Circus, or the City, seeking out and burning
all books of pretended prophecies, and abolishing every sacrificial ritual
except what was accordant with Roman usage! Those men were masters of
all human and divine love, and they believed that nothing tended so much to
destroy religion as the performance of sacrificial rites, not after the manner
of our fathers, but in fashions imported from abroad. I thought I ought to tell
you this beforehand, so that none of you may be distressed by fears on the
score of religion when you see us demolishing the seats of the Bacchanalia
and dispersing their impious gatherings. All that we shall do will be done
with the sanction of the gods and in obedience to their will. To show their
displeasure at the insult offered to their majesty by these lusts and crimes
they have dragged them out of their dark hiding-places into the light of day,
and they have willed that they shall be exposed not to enjoy impunity, but to
be punished and put an end to. "The senate has entrusted my colleague and
myself with extraordinary powers for conducting an inquiry into this matter.
We shall make an energetic use of them, and we have charged the
subordinate magistrates with the care of the night-watches throughout the
City. It is only right that you should show equal energy in doing your duty in
whatever position you may be placed and whatever orders you receive, and
also in making it your business to see that no danger or disturbance arise
through the secret plots of the criminals."