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"What games, then, are these which the soothsayers assert to have been performed with laxity and to have been desecrated? They are the games of which the immortal gods themselves and the great Idaean Mother (Cybele) willed that you, you, Gnaeus Lentulus, whose grandsire's grandsire with his own hands welcomed her, should be a spectator. For had you not on that day chosen to view the games of the Great Mother (Cybele), it is my belief that we should not have been permitted to survive and raise our present protest.

For innumerable bands of slaves that had been mustered by this scrupulous aedile (Clodius) from every quarter of the city, and had been incited for the occasion, were suddenly let loose upon us from every archway and entry, and at a given signal burst on to the stage. Then it was that you, yes, you, Lentulus, showed the same courage as your great-grandfather showed of old in a private capacity ; it was you, your name, your authority, your utterance, your majestic presence, and your resolute vigour, in support of which the senate and the knights of Rome and all true patriots rose to their feet, when Clodius exposed that senate and that Roman people to the mercies of a mob of jeering slaves, imprisoned and rendered powerless as they were in the tightly packed seats of the auditorium, and hampered by the confusion of the narrow exits."