我们聚集在论坛上，还在等什么?野蛮人今天就要来了。为什么参议院什么都没发生?为什么参议员坐在那里不立法?因为野蛮人今天就要来了。参议员现在可以制定什么法律?一旦野蛮人来了，他们就会立法。为什么我们的皇帝起得这么早，为什么他戴着皇冠坐在城的正门宝座上?因为野蛮人今天要来，皇帝正等着接见他们的领袖。他甚至准备了一卷书给他，上面写满了头衔，写满了令人印象深刻的名字。 Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.