Cicero's Answer

"...But our age, receiving the republic as a chef-d'oevre of another age which has already begun to grow old, has not merely neglected to restore the colours of the original, but has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline and most outstanding features...it is so obsolete and forgotten, that, far from practising it, one does not even know it. And of the citizens what shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime. For it is through our vices, and not by an mishap, that we retain only the name of republic, and have long since lost reality."

--Cicero, Roman statesman, 106 BC-43 BC

Veni, veni Emmanuel;
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio, Privatus Dei Filio.
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel, nascetur pro te, Israel!