"A strange experience has been mine, O--What shall I call you?--Men? But you do not perform the offices of men.--Citizens? But so far as you are concerned the city is perishing.--Romans? But you are undertaking to do away with this name.--Well, at any rate, whoever you are and by whatever name you delight to be called, mine has been an unexpected experience. For, though I am always doing everything to promote an increase of population among you and am now about to rebuke you, I grieve to see that you are numerous. I could rather wish that those others to whom I have just spoken were so many than to see you as many as you are; or, still better, to see you mustered with them,--or at least not to know how things stand. It is you who without pausing to reflect on the foresight of the gods or the care of your forefathers are bent upon annihilating your whole race and making it in truth mortal, upon destroying and ending the whole Roman nation. What seed of human beings would be left, if all the remainder of mankind should do the same as you? You are their leaders and may rightly bear the responsibility for universal destruction. Or, even if no others emulate you, will you not be justly hated for the very reason that you overlook what no one else would overlook, and neglect what no one else would neglect? You are introducing customs and practices, which, if imitated, would lead to the annihilation of all, and, if hated, would end in your own punishment. We do not spare murderers because all persons do not murder, nor do we let temple-robbers go because not everybody robs temples: but anybody who is convicted of committing any forbidden act is chastised for the very reason that he alone, or as one of a small group, does such things as no one else would do. [-5-] Yet if one should name over the greatest offences, there is none to compare with that which is now being committed by you, and this statement holds true not only if you examine crime for crime but if you compare all of them together with this single one of yours. You have incurred blood guiltiness by not begetting those who ought to be your descendants; you are sacrilegious in putting an end to the names and honors of your ancestors; you are impious in abolishing your families, which were instituted by the gods, and destroying the greatest of offerings to them,--the human being,--and by overthrowing in this way their rites and their temples. Moreover, by causing the downfall of the government you are disobedient to the laws, and you even betray your country by rendering her barren and childless: nay more, you lay her even with the dust by making her destitute of inhabitants. A city consists of human beings, not of houses or porticos or fora empty of men. Think what rage would justly seize the great Romulus, the founder of 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