But the hopes of wicked men do never obtain their accomplishment, and those who hope to escape thus will be still more, or at all events not less, taken prisoners than those - who were previously laid hold of. And even if some such persons do escape notice, they will still be exposed to insidious attacks from their natural enemies; and these are those most furious wild beasts who are well armed by the endowments of nature, and which God, simultaneously with the original creation of the universe, made for the purpose of striking terror into those men who were incapable of taking warning, and for executing implacable justice on those whose wickedness was incurable; and those who behold their cities razed to the


 Leviticus xxvi, 36. 


 


 very foundations will hardly believe that they were ever inhabited, and they will turn the sudden misfortunes which befall men after brilliant instances of prosperity into a proverb, recording all the instances which are mentioned or passed over in history. This contrast of present misery with former splendour is one of the circumstances mentioned by Thucydides as enhancing the terrors of the disasters the Athenians met with in Sicily. ἄλλως τε καὶ ἀπὸ οἱάς λαμπρότητος καὶ ἀπῖρονοο τοῦ πρώτον ἐς οἵαν τελεντὴν καὶ ταπεινότητα ἀφῖκτο. 7.75