Chapter Five

Of that custom, according to Sallust, a historian of outstanding truthfulness, Cato gives a sample in the speech on the conspirators which he delivered in the Senate: ‘Girls and young boys are ravished, children are torn from their parents’ arms, matrons must submit to the victor’s lust, temples and homes are plundered, murder and arson, weapons and corpses, blood and lamentations everywhere.’ Had he not mentioned temples, one might believe that enemies spared the abodes of the gods. And note that those horrors were to be feared for the Roman temples not merely from foreign foes, but from Catiline and his associates, all highly respected Senators and Roman citizens. But, I suppose, they were also villains and traitors to their country.

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, Books I–VII