Citizen of a fallen empire, the measure of your crimes
is full! The voice of a new nation calls through me for the freedom of
the earth, which was made for man, and not for Romans! The rule that
your ancestors won by strength their posterity shall no longer keep by
fraud. For two hundred years, hollow and unlasting truces have
alternated with long and bloody wars between your people and mine.
Remembering this, remembering the wrongs of the Goths in their
settlements in Thrace, the murder of the Gothic youths in the towns of
Asia, the massacre of the Gothic hostages in Aquileia, I come--chosen by
the supernatural decrees of Heaven--to assure the freedom and satisfy
the wrath of my nation, by humbling at its feet the power of tyrannic
Rome! It is not for battle and bloodshed that I am encamped before
yonder walls. It is to crush to the earth, by famine and woe, the pride
of your people and the spirit of your rulers; to tear from you your
hidden wealth, and to strip you of your boasted honour; to overthrow by
oppression the oppressors of the world; to deny you the glories of a
resistance, and to impose on you the shame of a submission.
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