Laudator Temporis Acti

Livy 5.30.1 (tr. B.O. Foster):

As to the senate, he ceased not to encourage it in opposing the law: they must go down into the Forum, when the day should arrive for voting on it, in no other spirit than that of men who realized that they had to fight for hearth and home, for the temples of their gods, and for the soil of their birth.

senatum vero incitare adversus legem haud desistebat: ne aliter descenderent in forum, cum dies ferendae legis venisset, quam ut qui meminissent sibi pro aris focisque et deum templis ac solo in quo nati essent dimicandum fore.

R.M. Ogilvie ad loc.:

aris focisque: 28.42.11, often appealed to by Cicero in patriotic outbursts of emotion (Phil. 2.72; in Catil. 4.24; cf. Sallust, Catil. 52.3, 59.5; see Otto, Sprichwörter s.v.). Strictly both arae and foci refer to domestic worship (Nisbet on de Domo 1)—'the altars on the hearth of the house'. There is no evidence of separate altars in private houses distinct from the hearths.

With solo in quo nati essent dimicandum compare Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 114 with note on p. 127:

When asked why he had decided to enlist in the Artists' Rifles in 1915, Edward Thomas stopped, picked up a pinch of earth, and said, 'Literally, for this.'<sup>58

58</sup> Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (Oxford, 1958; repr. 1979), p. 154.

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• Things Worth Fighting For (Cicero)
• Battle Cry