[2]
You have got to decide this day
whether you prefer for the future to deprive frantic and profligate
magistrates of the protection of wicked and unprincipled citizens, or even
to arm them with the cloak of religion and of the respect due to the
immortal gods. For if that pest and conflagration of the republic succeeds
in defending his own mischievous and fatal tribunate by appeals to divine
religion, when he cannot maintain it by any considerations of human equity,
then we must seek for other ceremonies, for other ministers of the immortal
gods, for other interpreters of the requirements of religion. But if those
things which were done by the madness of wicked men in the republic at a
time when it was oppressed by one party, deserted by another, and betrayed
by a third, are annulled by your authority and your wisdom, O priests, then
we shall have cause rightly and deservedly to praise the wisdom of our
ancestors in selecting the most honourable men of the state for the
priesthood.
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