It would be difficult to determine in which case the city was visited with the more horrible calamity, whether when it was captured by an enemy, or when a sanguinary tyrant crushed it by violence and arms.

Every evil, conscript fathers, which captured cities suffer, we have suffered, and do now as much as ever suffer.
All the enormities which the most cruel and savage tyrants are wont to perpetrate upon their oppressed subjects, Pleminius has perpetrated upon ourselves, our children, and our wives.
18.

"There is one circumstance, however, in complaining of which particularly we may be allowed to yield to our deeply-rooted sense of religion, and indulge a hope that you will listen to it; and, if it shall seem good to you, conscript fathers, free your state from the guilt of irreligious conduct.

For we have seen with how great solemnity you not only worship your own deities, but entertain even those of foreign countries.

We have a fane dedicated to Proserpine, of the sanctity of which temple I imagine some accounts must have reached you, during the war with Pyrrhus; who, when sailing by Locri, on his return from Sicily, among other horrid enormities which he committed against our state, on account of our fidelity towards you, plundered also the treasures of Proserpine, which had never been touched up to that day; and then, putting the money on board his ships, proceeded on his journey himself by land.