our race, if he could reflect on the circumstances of his own birth, and then upon your attitude,—­refusing to get children even by lawful marriages!  How wrathful would the Romans who were his followers be when they considered that they themselves even seized foreign girls, but you are not satisfied with those of your own race.  They actually had children even by their enemies:  you will not beget them even of women with undisputed standing in the State.  How incensed would Curtius be, who endured to die that the married men might not be sundered from their wives:  how indignant Hersilia, the attendant of her daughter, who instituted for us all the rites of marriage.  Our fathers fought the Sabines to obtain marriages and made peace through the intercession of their wives and children; they administered oaths and made sundry treaties for this very purpose:  you are bringing all that labor to naught.  Why is it?  Do you desire to live forever apart from women, as the vestal virgins live apart from men?  Then you should be punished like them if you break out into any act of lewdness.

[-6-] “I know that my words to you appear bitter and harsh.  But, first of all, reflect that physicians, too, treat many patients by burning when they can not recover health in any other way.  In the second place, it is not my wish or my pleasure to speak them; and hence it is that I have this further reproach to bring against you, that you have provoked me to this discourse.  If you dislike what I say, do not continue the conduct for which you are inevitably reprimanded.  If my speech wounds any of you, how much more do your acts wound both me and all the rest of the Romans.  If you vexed in very truth, make a change, that so I may praise and reward you.  You yourselves are aware that I am not irritable by nature and that I have done, subject to human limitations, all the acts proper for a good lawgiver.  Never in old times was any one permitted to neglect marriage and the rearing of children, but from the very outset, at the first establishment of the government, strict laws were passed regarding them:  since then many decrees have been issued by both the senate and the people, which it would be superfluous to enumerate.  I have increased the penalties for the disobedient in order that through fear of becoming liable to them you may be brought to your senses.  To those that obey I have offered more numerous and greater prizes than are given for any other display of excellence, that if for no other reason at least by this one you may be persuaded to marry and beget children.  Yet you, not striving for any of the recompenses nor fearing any of the penalties, have despised all these measures, have trodden them all under foot, as if you were not even inhabitants of the city.  You declare you have taken upon yourselves this free and continent life, without wives and without children.  You are no different from robbers or the most savage [-7-] beasts.  It is not your delight in a solitary