Plunderers of the world, they have exhausted the land and now ransack the sea. Enemy wealth excites their greed, enemy poverty their lust for power; as is obvious, since neither East nor West has yet glutted them.
While relatives are being torn from us by conscription to slave it in other lands, our wives and sisters... are defiled by those who masquerade as friends and guests. Our goods and fortunes are drained to pay taxes, the produce of our land to pay corn levies, and our very bodies and hands to build roads through forests and swamps, under blows and insults
Perverting language, they call robbery, butchery and extortion "government", and when they make a desert, they call it peace
-Tacitus, Attr. Galgacus
While relatives are being torn from us by conscription to slave it in other lands, our wives and sisters... are defiled by those who masquerade as friends and guests. Our goods and fortunes are drained to pay taxes, the produce of our land to pay corn levies, and our very bodies and hands to build roads through forests and swamps, under blows and insults
Perverting language, they call robbery, butchery and extortion "government", and when they make a desert, they call it peace
-Tacitus, Attr. Galgacus
maelwys:
Good old Tacitus, I used that as journal entry myself a while back. Slightly different translation of it. Still appropriate after 2000 odd years, humanity hasn't changed that much.