Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 40

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Then on a sudden a very great tempest arose, O judges; so that Dolabella could not only not depart, when he wished, but could scarcely stand in the city, such vast waves were dashed on shore. Here that ship of that pirate loaded with the consecrated statues, being cast up and driven ashore by the waves, is broken to pieces. Those statues of Apollo were found on the shore; by command of Dolabella they are restored; the tempest is lulled; Dolabella departs from Delos. ⁴⁷I do not doubt, though there was no feeling of humanity ever in you, no regard for holiness, still that now in your fear and danger thoughts of your wicked actions occurred to you. Can there be any comfortable hope of safety cherished by you, when you recollect how impious, how wicked, how blasphemous has been your conduct towards the immortal gods? Did you dare to plunder the Delian Apollo? Did you dare to lay impious and sacrilegious hands on that temple, so ancient, so venerated, so holy? If you were not in your childhood taught and framed to learn and know what has been committed to writing, still would you not afterwards, when you came into the very places themselves, learn and believe what is handed down both by tradition and by documents: ⁴⁸That Latona, after a long wandering and persecution, pregnant, and now near bringing forth, when her time was come, fled to Delos, and there brought forth Apollo and Diana; from which belief of men that island is considered sacred to those gods; and such is and always has been the influence of that religious belief, that not even the Persians, when they waged war on all Greece, on gods and men, and when they had put in with a fleet of a thousand ships at Delos, attempted to violate, or even to touch anything. Did you, O most wicked, O most insane of men, attempt to plunder this temple? Was any covetousness of such power as to extinguish such solemn religious belief? And if you did not think of this at that time, do you not recollect even now that there is no evil so great as not to have been long since due to you for your wicked actions?