5.53
"But, you may say, it is
obvious that the whole City is polluted, and no
expiatory sacrifices can purify it; circumstances
themselves compel us to quit a City devastated by
fire, and all in ruins, and migrate to Veii where
everything is untouched. We must not distress the
poverty-stricken plebs by building here. I fancy,
however, Quirites, that it is evident to you,
without my telling you, that this suggestion is a
plausible excuse rather than a true reason. You
remember how this same question of migrating to Veii
was mooted before the Gauls came, whilst public and
private buildings were still safe and the City stood
secure. And mark you, tribunes, how widely my view
differs from yours. Even supposing it ought not to
have been done then, you think that at any rate it
ought to be done now, whereas -do not express
surprise at what I say before you have grasped its
purport -I am of opinion that even had it been
right to migrate then when the City was wholly
unhurt, we ought not to abandon these ruins now. For
at that time the reason for our migrating to a
captured city would have been a victory glorious for
us and for our posterity, but now this migration
would be glorious for the Gauls, but for us shame
and bitterness. For we shall be thought not to have
left our native City as victors, but to have lost it
because we were vanquished; it will look as though
it was the flight at the Alia, the capture of the
City, the beleaguering of the Capitol, which had
laid upon us the necessity of deserting our
household gods and dooming ourselves to banishment
from a place which we were powerless to defend. Was
it possible for Gauls to overthrow Rome and shall it
be deemed impossible for Romans to restore it?
"What more remains except for them to come
again with fresh forces -we all know that their
numbers surpass belief -and elect to live in this
City which they captured, and you abandoned, and for
you to allow them to do so? Why, if it were not
Gauls who were doing this, but your old enemies, the
Aequi and Volscians, who migrated to Rome, would you
wish them to be Romans and you Veientines? Or would
you rather that this were a desert of your own than
the city of your foes? I do not see what could be
more infamous. Are you prepared to allow this crime
and endure this disgrace because of the trouble of
building? If no better or more spacious dwelling
could be put up in the whole City of Rome than that
hut of our Founder, would it not be better to live
in huts after the manner of herdsmen and peasants,
surrounded by our temples and our gods, than to go
forth as a nation of exiles? Our ancestors,
shepherds and refugees, built a new City in a few
years, when there was nothing in these parts but
forests and swamps; are we shirking the labour of
rebuilding what has been burnt, though the Citadel
and Capitol are intact, and the temples of the gods
still stand? What we would each have done in our own
case, had our houses caught fire, are we as a
community refusing to do now that the City has been
burnt?