6“I know that I seem to you to speak bitterly and harshly. But reflect, in the first place, that physicians, too, treat many patients by cautery and surgery, when they cannot be cured in any other way; 2and, in the second place, that it is not my wish or my pleasure to speak thus. Hence I have this further reproach to bring against you, that you have provoked me to this discourse. As for yourselves, if you do not like what I say, do not continue this conduct for which you are being and must ever be reproached. If my words do wound some of you, how much more do your actions wound both me and all the rest of the Romans ! 3Accordingly, if you are vexed in very truth, change your course, so that I may praise and recompense you; for that I am not harsh by nature and that I have accomplished, subject to human limitations, everything it was proper for a good law-giver to do, even you cannot fail to realize.
4“Indeed, it was never permitted to any man, even in olden times, to neglect marriage and the begetting of children; but from the very outset, when the government was first established, strict laws were made regarding these matters, and subsequently many decrees were passed by both the senate and the people, which it would be superfluous to enumerate here. 5I, now, have increased the penalties for the disobedient, in order that through fear of becoming liable to them you might be brought to your senses; and to the obedient I have offered a more numerous and greater prizes than are given for any other display of excellence, in order that for this reason, if for no other, you might be persuaded to marry and beget children. 6Yet you have not striven for any of the recompenses nor feared any of the penalties, but have shown contempt for all these measures and have trodden them all underfoot, as if you were not living in a civilized community. You talk, forsooth, about this ‘free’ and ‘untrammelled’ life that you have adopted, without wives and without children; but you are not a whit better than brigands or the most savage of beasts.