1There is, there surely is such a power; and it is not the case that in these bodies and in this weakness of ours there is something that lives and feels, but not in this so great and so splendid movement of nature. 1Unless perhaps they do not believe it because it does not appear and is not seen, just as if we could see our own mind itself, by which we are wise, by which we foresee, by which we do and say these very things, and perceive clearly what it is like or where it is. 1That very power, then, which has often brought incredible prosperity and wealth to this city, has destroyed and removed that plague, by first putting it into his mind to dare to provoke the bravest of men with violence and to attack him with the sword, and to be defeated by the man by defeating whom he would have gained impunity and licence for ever.
85Not by human design, judges, nor even by any ordinary care of the immortal gods, was that deed accomplished. 85The very regions, by Hercules, which saw that beast fall seem to have stirred themselves and asserted their rights over him. 85For it is you, Alban hills and groves, you, I say, that I implore and call to witness, and you, buried altars of the Albans, partners and equals of the sacred rites of the Roman people, which he in headlong madness, after cutting down and laying low the most holy groves, had crushed beneath the mad masses of his substructures; 85your sanctities then prevailed, your power was strong, which he had defiled with every crime; 85and you, holy Jupiter of Latium, from your lofty mountain, whose lakes, groves and borders he had often stained with every abominable lust and crime, at last opened your eyes to punish him: to you, to you, in your sight, that late but just and deserved punishment was paid.
86Unless perhaps we shall say that this too happened by chance: that in front of the very shrine of the Good Goddess, which is on the estate of Titus Sertius Gallus, a most honourable and distinguished young man, in front of the Good Goddess herself, I say, when he had joined battle, he received that first wound from which he was to meet a most foul death, so that he seemed not to have been acquitted at that wicked trial, but to have been reserved for this signal punishment.