I implore you, I call you to witness,—you, I say, O you Alban hills and groves, and you, O you altars of the Albans, now overthrown, but nevertheless partners of and equals in honour with the sacred rites of the Roman people,—you, whom that man with headlong insanity, having cut down and destroyed the most holy groves, had overwhelmed with his insane masses of buildings; it was your power then that prevailed, it was the divinity of your altars, the religious reverence due to you, and which he had profaned by every sort of wickedness, that prevailed; and you, too, O sacred Jupiter of Latium, whose lakes and groves and boundaries he had constantly polluted with every sort of abominable wickedness and debauchery, you at last from your high and holy mountain, opened your eyes for the purpose of punishing him; it is to you, to all of you, that those punishments, late indeed, but still just and well deserved, have been made an atonement for his wickedness. [86]
Unless, perchance, we are to say that it was by accident that it happened that it was before the very shrine of the Good Goddess which is in the farm of Titus Sextus Gallius, a most honourable and accomplished young man,—before the Good Goddess herself, I say, that when he had begun the battle, he received that first wound under which he gave up that foul soul of his; so that he did not seem to have been acquitted in that iniquitous trial, but only to have been reserved for this conspicuous punishment. [cap.32]