[135]
What do you think that the Rhegians, who now are Roman
citizens, would take to allow that marble Venus to be taken from them? What would
the Tarentines take to lose the Europa sitting on the Bull? or the Satyr which they
have in the temple of Vesta? or their other monuments? What would the Thespians take
to lose the statue of Cupid, the only object for which any one ever goes to see
Thespiae? What would the men of
Cnidos take for their marble Venus? or
the Coans for their picture of her? or the Ephesians for Alexander? the men of
Cyzicus for their Ajax or Medea? What
would the Rhodians take for Ialysus? the
Athenians for their marble Bacchus, or their picture of Paralus, or their brazen
Heifer, the work of Myron? It would be a long business and an unnecessary one, to
mention what is worth going to see among all the different nations in all Asia and Greece; but that is the reason why I am enumerating these things,
because I wish you to consider that an incredible indignation must be the feeling of
those men from whose cities these things are carried away.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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