[132]
and therefore, O judges, those men who are accustomed to
take strangers about to all those things which are worth going to see, and to show
them every separate thing, whom they call mystagogi, (or cicerones,) now have their
description of things reversed; for as they formerly used to show what there was in
every place, so now they show what has been taken from every place.
What do you think, then? Do you think that those men are affected with but a
moderate indignation? Not so, O judges: in the first place, because all men are
influenced by religious feeling, and think that their paternal gods, whom they have
received from their ancestors, are to be carefully worshipped and retained by
themselves; and secondly, because this sort of ornament, these works and specimens
of art, these statues and paintings, delight men of Greek extraction to an excessive
degree; therefore by their complaints we can understand that these things appear
most bitter to those men, which perhaps may seem trifling and contemptible to us.
Believe me, O judges, although I am aware to a certainty that you yourselves hear
the same things, that though both our allies and foreign nations have during these
past years sustained many calamities and injuries, yet men of Greek extraction have
not been, and are not, more indignant at any than at this ruthless plundering of
their temples and altars.
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