[100]
O miserable and bitter spectacle! that the
glory of the city and the name of the Roman people should be a laughingstock; that
in the face of all that body of inhabitants and all that multitude of people, a
pirate in a piratical galley should celebrate a triumph in the harbour of Syracuse over a fleet of the Roman people,
while the oars of the pirates were actually besprinkling the eyes of that most
worthless and cowardly praetor.
After the pirates had left the harbour, not because of any alarm, but because they
were weary of staying there, these men began to inquire the cause of so great a
disaster. All began to say, and to argue openly, that it was by no means strange,
that when the soldiers and the crews had been dismissed, and the rest had been
destroyed by want and famine, while the praetor was spending all his time in
drinking with his women, such a disgrace and calamity should have fallen upon them.
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