Do you think that those nations are influenced in giving
 their evidence by the sanctity of an oath, and by the fear of the immortal gods, which are so
 widely different from other nations in their habits and natural disposition? For other nations
 undertake wars in defence of their religious feelings; they wage war against the religion of
 every people; other nations when waging war beg for sanction and pardon from the immortal gods;
 they have waged war with the immortal gods themselves. 
 These are the nations which formerly marched to such a distance from their settlements, as far
 as Delphi , to attack and pillage the Pythian Apollo,
 and the oracle of the whole world. By these same nations, so pious, so scrupulous in giving
 their evidence, was the Capitol besieged, and that
 Jupiter , under the obligations of whose name our
 ancestors decided that the good faith of all witnesses should be pledged. Lastly, can anything appear holy or solemn in the eyes of those men, who, if
 ever they are so much influenced by any fear as to think it necessary to propitiate the immortal
 gods, defile their altars and temples with human victims? So that they cannot pay proper honour
 to religion itself without first violating it with wickedness. For who is ignorant that, to this
 very day, they retain that savage and barbarous custom of sacrificing men? What, therefore, do
 you suppose is the good faith, what the piety of those men, who think that even the immortal
 gods can be most easily propitiated by the wickedness and murder of men? Will you connect your
 own religious ideas with these witnesses? Will you think that anything is said holily or
 moderately by these men? Will your minds, pure and upright as
 they are, bring themselves into such a state that, when all our ambassadors who for the last
 three years have arrived in Gaul , when all the Roman
 knights who have been in that province, when all the traders of that province, when, in short,
 all the allies and friends of the Roman people who are in Gaul , wish Marcus Fonteius to be safe, and extol him on their oaths both in public
 and in private, you should still prefer to give your decision in unison with the Gauls?
 Appealing to comply with what? With the wishes of men? Is then the wish of our enemies to have
 more authority in your eyes than that of our countrymen? With the dignity of the witnesses? Can
 you then possibly prefer strangers to people whom you know, unjust men to just ones, foreigners
 to countrymen, covetous men to moderate ones, mercenary men to disinterested ones, impious men
 to conscientious ones, men who are the greatest enemies to our dominions and to our name, to
 good and loyal allies and citizens? Are you then hesitating, O judges, when all these nations have an innate hatred to and wage
 incessant war with the name of the Roman people? Do you think that, with their military cloaks
 and their breeches, they come to us in a lowly and submissive spirit, as these do, who having
 suffered injuries fly to us as suppliants and inferiors to beg the aid of the judges? Nothing is
 further from the truth. On the contrary, they are strolling in high spirits and with their heads
 up, all over the forum, uttering threatening expressions, and terrifying men with barbarous and
 ferocious language; which, in truth, I should not believe, O judges, if I had not repeatedly
 heard such things from the mouths of the accusers themselves in your presence,—when they warned
 you to take care, lest, by acquitting this man, you should excite some new Gallic war.