Many things, O priests, have been devised and established with divine wisdom
by our ancestors; but no action of theirs was ever more wise than their
determination that the same men should superintend both what relates to the
religious worship due to the immortal gods, and also what concerns the
highest interests of the state, so that they might preserve the republic as
the most honourable and eminent of the citizens, by governing it well, and
as priests by wisely interpreting the requirements of religion. But if there
has ever been a time when an important cause has depended on the decision
and power of the priests of the Roman people, this indeed is that cause;
being such that the dignity of the whole republic, the safety of all the
citizens, their lives, their liberties, their altars, their hearths, their
household gods, their properties and condition as citizens, and their homes,
all appear to be committed and entrusted to your wisdom integrity, and
power.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.