“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
For what, O judges, is more full of labor than we both are, what can be either expressed or imagined more full of anxiety and uneasiness than we are, who being induced to devote ourselves to the republic by the hope of the most honorable rewards, yet cannot be free from the fear of the most cruel punishments?
I have always thought indeed that Milo had to encounter the other storms and tempests in these billows of the assemblies because he always espoused the cause of the good against the bad; but in a court of justice, and in that council in which the most honorable men of all ranks are sitting as judges, I never imagined that Milo’s enemies could have any hope of diminishing his glory by the aid of such men, much less of at all injuring his safety. ( Cicero: Speech in Defense of Titus Annius Milo)