Ab urbe condita

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?