Roman writers

Those Romans sure could pen a powerful thought and sentiment. When I was between 15 and 25 years old, I went through a very rewarding patch reading the Roman historians and orators. Cicero was one of those who I found always intriguing. I am reminded by coming across this muscular yet allusive passage of his:

A nation can survive it's 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.

For the traitor appears not as a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Marcus Tullius Cicero
Roman orator, statesman 42 B.C.