All these gods, both public and private, do ye, Romans, pretend to forsake.

What similarity does your conduct bear [to that] which lately during the siege was beheld with no less admiration by the enemy than by yourselves in that excellent Caius Fabius, when he descended from the citadel amid the Gallic weapons, and performed on the Quirinal hill the solemn rites of the Fabian family?
Is it your wish that the family religious rites should not be intermitted even during war, but that the public rites and the Roman gods should be deserted even in time of peace, and that the pontiffs and flamens should be more negligent of public religious ceremonies, than a private individual in the anniversary rite of a particular family?
Perhaps some one may say, that we will either perform these duties at Veii, or that we will send our priests hither from thence in order to perform them; neither of which can be done, without infringing on the established forms.

For not to enumerate all the sacred rites severally and all the gods, whether in the banquet of Jupiter can the lectisternium be performed in any other place, save in the Capitol?
What shall I say of the eternal fire of Vesta, and of the statue, which, as the pledge of empire, is kept under the safeguard of her temple?
What, O Mars Gradivus, and you, father Quirinus, of your Ancilia?
Is it right that these sacred things, coeval with the city, some of them more ancient than the origin of the city, should be abandoned to profanation?
And, observe the difference existing between us and our ancestors.

They handed down to us certain sacred rites to be performed by us on the Alban and on the Lavinian mounts.

Was it in conformity with religion that these sacred rites were transferred to us to Rome from the cities of our enemies?
shall we transfer them hence to Veii, an enemy's city, without impiety?
Come, recollect how often sacred rites are performed anew, because some ceremony of our country had been omitted through negligence or accident.