Go, thou, as fortunate as Greeks to Troy; As glorious as Alcides in thy toils; As happy as Sertorius in thy fight; As valiant as Achilles in thy might: Go, glorious, valiant, happy, fortunate, As all those Greeks and him of Roman state!

Metellus, gentle Metellus, Fetch me Sertorius from Iberia: In doing so thou standest me in stead, For sore I long to see the traitor's head.

You recall, further, how many reverses of a serious nature we endured in the war against Sertorius through lack of a general, and that we found no one else among young or old adapted to it except the man before you; and that we sent him to the field in place of both consuls, although at that time he had not yet reached a mature age and was not a member of the senate.

This was Zamolcus's stratagem amongst the Thracians, Numa's plot, when he said he had conference with the nymph Aegeria, and that of Sertorius with a hart; to get more credit to their decrees, by deriving them from the gods; or else they did all by divine instinct, which Nicholas Damascen well observes of Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos, they had their laws dictated, monte sacro, by Jupiter himself.