For think not, O conscript fathers, that, as you see on the stage, wicked men are, by the instigation of the gods, terrified by the blazing torches of the Furies. It is his own dishonesty, his own crime, his own wickedness, his own audacity that deprives each individual of sense and discernment. These are the Furies, these the flames, these the firebrands which distress the impious. [47] Must I not think you senseless and frantic, and out of your mind,—must I not think you madder than that Orestes in the tragedy, or than Athamas, when you dared first of all to act so, (for this is the head and front of your offending,) and again, a short time afterwards, when Torquatus, a most influential and conscientious man, pressed you openly to confess that you left Macedonia, that province into which you had carried so vast an army, without one single soldier? I say nothing of your having lost the greater part of your army; that might be owing to your ill fortune. But what reason can you allege for having disbanded any part of your army? What power had you to do so? What law, what resolution of the senate authorized such a step? Where was your right to do so? What precedent was there for it? What is this but madness, but ignorance of men, ignorance of the laws, and of the senate, and of the constitution?