'Our complaints of the present, should be softened. But, what chiefly I would urge is this, that since those ages of early virtue--after all, perhaps, like all else at the same period, partly fabulous--Rome has been but what it is, adorned by virtues that have claimed the admiration of the world, and polluted by vices that have drawn upon her the reprobation of the good, yet, which are but such as the world shows its surface over, from the farthest India, to the bleak wastes of Britain. It is, Aurelian, a thing neither strange nor new that vices thrive in Rome. And, long since, have there been those, like Nerva and the good Severus, and the late censor Valerian, who have aimed at their correction. These, and others who, before and since, have wrought in the same work, have done well for the empire. Their aim has been a high one, and the favor of the gods has been theirs. Aurelian may do more and better in the same work, seeing his power is greater and his piety more zealous.' 'These are admitted truths, Fronto, save the last; but whither do they tend?' 'To this. Because, Aurelian, vice has been in Rome; because even the priesthood has been corrupt, and the temples themselves the sties you say they now are--for this, have the gods ever withdrawn their protection? Has Rome ever been the less prosperous? What is more, can we conceive that they who made us of their own fiery mould, so prone to violate the bounds of moderation, would, for yielding to such instincts, interpose in wrath, as if that had happened which was not foreseen, and against which, they had made sure provision? Are the heavens to blaze with the fires of the last day, thunders to roll as if earth were shaken to her centre, the entrails of dumb beasts to utter forth terrific prophecy of great and impending wo, because, forsooth, the people of Rome are by no means patterns of purity--because, perchance, within the temples themselves, an immorality may have been purposed, or perpetrated--because, even the priests themselves have not been, or are not, white and spotless as their robes?' 'There seems some reason in what you say.'