And if we ought to consider our parents most dear to us, because by
them our life, our property, our freedom, and our rights as citizens have been given to us; if
we love the immortal gods, by whose kindness we have preserved all those things, and have also
had other benefits added to them; if we are most deeply attached to the Roman people owing to
the honours paid to us by whom we have been placed in this most noble council, and in the very
highest rank and dignity and in this citadel of the whole earth, if we are devoted to this
order of the senate by which we have been frequently distinguished by most honourable decrees
in our favour, surely it is a boundless and infinite obligation which we are under to you,
who, by your singular zeal and unanimity an my behalf, have combined at one time the benefits
done us by our parents, the bounty of the immortal gods, the honours conferred on us by the
Roman people, and your own frequent decisions in my case; in such a manner that, owing, as we
do, much to you, and great gratitude to the Roman people, and innumerable thanks to our
parents, and everything to the immortal gods, the honours and enjoyments which we had
separately before by their instrumentality, we have now recovered all together by your
kindness.
Therefore, O conscript fathers, we seem by your agency to have
obtained a species of immortality, a thing too great to be even wished for by men. For what
time will there ever be in which the memory and fame of your kindnesses to me will perish? The
memory of your kindness, who, at the very time that you were besieged by violence and arms and
terror and threats, not long after my departure all agreed in recalling me, at the motion of
Lucius Ninnius, a most fearless and virtuous man, the most faithful and (if it had come to a
battle) the least timid defender of my safety that that fatal year could produce. After the
honour of making a formal decree to that effect was refused to you by the means of that
tribune of the people, who as he was unable of himself to injure the republic, destroyed it as
far as he could by the wickedness of another, you never kept silence concerning me, you never
ceased to demand my safety from those consuls who had sold it.
Therefore, at last it was owing to your authority and your zeal that that
very year which I had preferred to have fatal to myself rather than to my country, elected
these men as tribunes, who proposed a law concerning my safety, and constantly brought it
under your notice. For the consuls being modest men, and having a regard for the laws, were
hindered by a law, not by the one which had been passed concerning me, but by one respecting
themselves, when my enemy had carried a clause, that when those men had come to life again who
nearly destroyed the state, then I might return to the city. By which action he confessed two
things—both that he longed for them to be living, and also that the republic would be in great
peril, if either the enemies and murderers of the republic came to life again, or if I did not
return. Therefore, in that very year when I had departed, and when the
chief man of the state was forced to defend his own life, not by the protection of the laws,
but by that of his own walls,—when the republic was without consuls, and bereft, like an
orphan, not only of its regular parents, but even of its annual guardians,—when you were
forbidden to deliver your opinions,—when the chief clause of my proscription was repeatedly
read,—still you never hesitated to consider my safety as united with the general welfare.
But when, by the singular and admirable virtue of Publius Lentulus the
consul, you began on the first of January to see light arising in the republic out of the
clouds and darkness of the preceding year,—when the great reputation of Quintus Metellus, that
most noble and excellent man, and the virtue and loyalty of the praetors, and of nearly all
the tribunes of the people, had likewise come to the aid of the republic,—when Cnaeus
Pompeius, the greatest man for virtue, and glory, and achievements that any nation or any age
has ever produced, the most illustrious man that memory can suggest thought that he could
again come with safety into the senate,—then your unanimity with respect to my safety was so
great that my body only was absent, my dignity had already returned to this country.
And that month you were able to form an opinion as to what was the difference between me
and my enemies. I abandoned my own safety, in order to save the republic from being (for my
sake) stained with the blood of the citizens; they thought fit to hinder my return, not by the
votes of the Roman people, but by a river of blood. Therefore, after those events, you gave no
answers to the citizens, or the allies, or to kings; the judges gave no decisions; the people
came to no vote on any matter; this body issued no declarations by its authority; you saw the
forum silent the senate-house mute, the city dumb and dispirited.
And then, too, when he had gone away, who, being authorized by you, had resisted murder and
conflagration, you saw men rushing all over the city with sword and firebrand; you saw the
houses of the magistrates attacked, the temples of the gods burnt, the faces of a most admirable man and illustrious consul burnt, the holy person of a
most fearless and virtuous officer, a tribune of the people, not only laid hands on and
insulted, but wounded with the sword and killed. And by that murder some magistrates were so
alarmed, that partly out of fear of death, partly out of despair for the republic, they in
some degree forsook my cause; but others remained behind, whom neither terror, nor violence,
nor hope, nor fear, nor promises, nor threats, nor arms, nor firebrands, could influence so as
to make them cease to stand by your authority, and the dignity of the Roman people, and my
safety.
The chief of those men was Publius Lentulus, the parent and god of my
life, and fortune, and memory, and name. He thought that the best proof that he could give of
his virtue, the best indication that he could afford of his disposition, the greatest ornament
with which he could embellish his consulship would be the restoration of me to myself, to my
friends, to you, and to the republic. And as soon as ever he was appointed consul elect he
never hesitated to express an opinion concerning my safety worthy both of himself and of the
republic. When the veto was interposed by the tribune of the people,—when that admirable
clause was read: “That no one should make any motion before you that no one should propose any
decree to you that no one should raise any discussion, or make any speech or take any vote or
frame any law;” he thought all that as I have said before, a proscription and not a law, by
which a citizen who had deserved well of the republic was by name and without any trial, taken
from the senate and the republic at the same time. But as soon as he entered on his office, I
will not say what did he do before, but what else did he do at all, except labour by my
preservation to establish your authority and dignity on a firm basis for the
future?
O ye immortal gods! what great kindness do you appear to have shown me, in making Publius
Lentulus consul this year. How much greater still would your bounty bare been, had he been so
the preceding year; for I should not have been in want of such medicine as a consul could
give, unless I had fallen by a wound inflicted by a consul. I had been often told by one of
the wisest of men and one of the most virtuous of citizens, Quintus Catulus, that it was not
often that there was one wicked consul, but that there had never been two at the same time
since the foundation of Rome, except in that terrible time of Cinna. Wherefore, he used to say
that my interest would always be firmly secured, as long as there was even one virtuous consul
in the republic. And he would have spoken the truth, if that state of things with respect to
consuls could have remained lasting and perpetual, that, as there never had been two bad ones
in the republic, so there never should be. But if Quintus Metellus had been at that time
consul, who was then my enemy, do you doubt what would have been his feelings with regard to
my preservation, when you see that he was a mover and seconder of the measure proposed for my
restoration?
But at that time there were two consuls, whose minds, narrow, contemptible, mean,
groveling, dark, and dirty, were unable to look properly at, or to uphold, or to support the
mere name of the consulship, much less the splendour of that honour, and the importance of
that authority. They were not consuls, but dealers in provinces, and sellers of your dignity.
One of whom demanded back from me, in the hearing of many, Catiline, his lover; the other
reclaimed Cethegus, his cousin;—the two most wicked men in the memory of man, who (I will not
call them consuls, but robbers) not only deserted, in a cause in which, above all others, the
welfare of the republic and the dignity of the consulship was concerned, but betrayed me, and
opposed me, and wished to see me stripped of all aid, not only from themselves, but also from
you and from the other orders of the state. One of them, however, deceived neither me nor any
one else.
For who ever could have any hope of any good existing in that man, the
earliest period of whose life was made openly subservient to everyone's lusts; who had not the
heart to repel the obscene impurity of men from the holiest portion of his person? who, after
he had ruined his own estate with no less activity than he afterwards displayed in his
endeavours to ruin the republic, supported his indigence and his luxury by every sort of
pandering and infamy; who, if he had not taken refuge at the altar of the tribuneship, would
not have been able to escape from the authority of the praetor, nor the multitude of his
creditors, nor the seizure of his goods. And if he had not while in discharge of that office,
passed that law about the piratical war, he, in truth, would have yielded to his own poverty
and wickedness, and had recourse to piracy himself; and who would have done so with less
injury to the republic than he did by remaining within our walls as an impious enemy and
robber. It was he who was inspecting victims, and sitting in the discharge of that duty, when
a tribune of the people procured a law to be passed that no regard should be had to the
auspices,—that no one should on that account be allowed to interrupt the assembly or the
comitia, or to put his veto on the passing of a law; and
that the Aelian and Fufian “The Aelia
lex and Rufia lex were passed about the end of
the sixth century of the city, and gave all magistrates the obnuntiatio, or power of preventing or dissolving the comitia by observing the omens, and declaring them to be unfavourable.”—Smith,
Dict. Ant. p. 560, v. Lex. laws should have no
validity, which our ancestors had enacted, intending them to be the firmest protection of the
republic against the insanity of the tribunes.
And he also afterwards, when a countless multitude of virtuous men had come to him from the
Capitol as suppliants, and in morning garments, and when all the most noble young men of Rome,
and all the Roman knights, had thrown themselves at the feet of that most profligate pander,
with what an expression of countenance did that curled and perfumed debauchee reject, not only
the tears of the citizens, but even the prayers of his country! Nor was he content with that
but he even went up to the assembly, and there said what even if his man Catiline had come to
life again he would not have dared to say,—that he would make the Roman knights pay for the
nones of December of my consulship, and for the Capitoline Hill; and he not only said this,
but he even summoned those before him that suited him. And this imperious consul actually
banished from the city Lucius Lamia, a Roman knight, a man of the highest character, and a
very eager advocate of my safety, because of his intimacy with me, and very much attached to
the state, as it was likely that a man of his fortune would be. And when you had passed a
resolution to change your garments, and had changed them, and though, indeed, all virtuous men
had already done the same thing, he, reeking with perfumes, clad in his toga praetexta, which all the praetors and aediles had at that time
laid aside, derided your mourning garb, and the grief of a most grateful city, and did what no
tyrant ever did,—he issued an edict that you should lament your disasters in secret and not
presume openly to bewail the miseries of your country.
And when in the Circus Flaminius The Circus
Flaminius was outside the walls of the city, and the assembly was held there to allow Caesar
to be present, who, being now invested with a military command, could not come into the
city. (I will not say the consul had been conducted into the assembly by a tribune of
the people, but) the archpirate had been brought in by another robber, he came first a man of
what exceeding dignity, full of wine, sleep, and debauchery! with hair dripping with
ointments, with carefully arranged locks, with heavy eyes, moist cheeks, a husky and drunken
voice; and he, a grave authority, said that he was greatly displeased at citizens having been
executed without having been formally condemned. Where is it that this great authority has
lain hid so long out of our sight? Why has the extraordinary virtue of this ringletted dunce
been wasted so long in scenes of debauchery and gluttony? For that other man, Caesoninus
Calventius, from his youth up has been habituated to the forum, though, except his assumed and
crafty melancholy, there was no single thing to recommend him,—no knowledge of the law, no
skill in speaking, no knowledge of military affairs or of men, no liberality. And if, while
passing him, you noticed how ungentlemanlike, and rough, and sulky he looked, though you might
think him a barbarian and a boor, still you would not suppose him to be lascivious and
profligate.
You would think it made no difference whether you were standing in the forum with this man,
or with a barbarian from Aethiopia; there he was, in that sense, without flavour, a mute,
slow, uncivilized piece of goods. You would be apt to suppose him a Cappadocian just escaped
out of a lot of slaves for sale. Then, again, how lustful was he at home,—how impure, how
intemperate. He was not like a front-door, open for the reception of legitimate pleasures, but
when he began to devote himself to literature, and, beastly rather a postern for all sorts of
secret gratification. And glutton that he was, to learn philosophy with the Greeks, then he
became an Epicurean, not because he was really much devoted to that sect such as it is, but
because he was caught by that one expression about pleasure. And he has masters, none of those
foolish fellows who go on for whole days discussing duty and virtue,—who exhort men to labour,
to industry, to encounter dangers for the sake of their country, but men who argue that no
hour ought to be unoccupied by pleasure; that in every part of the body there ought always to
be some joy and delight to be perceived.
He uses his masters as a sort of superintendents of his lusts; they seek out and scent out
all sorts of pleasures; they are the seasoners and furnishers of his banquets they appraise
and value the different pleasures, they give a formal decision and judgment as to how much
indulgence ought to be allowed to each separate pleasure. He, becoming accomplished in all
these arts, despised this most prudent city to such a degree that he thought that all his
lusts and all his atrocities could be concealed, if he only thrust his ill-omened face into
the forum.
He deceived me, though I will not so much say me (for I know, from my
connection with the Pisos how much the Transalpine blood on his mother's side had removed him
from the qualities of that family) but he deceived you and the Roman people, not by his wisdom
or his eloquence, as is often the case with many men, but by his wrinkled brow and solemn
look.
Lucius Piso, did you dare at that time with that eye (I will not say with that mind ) with
that forehead (I will not say with what character,) and with that arrogance (for I cannot say,
after such achievements,) to unite with Aulus Gabinius in forming plans for my ruin? Did not
the odour of that man's perfumes, or his breath reeking with wine, or his forehead marked with
the traces of the curling-iron, lead you to think that as you were like him in reality, you
were no longer able to use the impenetrability of your countenance to conceal such enormous
atrocities? Did you dare to continue with that man to abandon the consular dignity,—the
existing condition of the republic,—the authority of the senate,—the fortunes of a citizen who
had above all others deserved well of the republic, to the provinces? While you
were consul, according to your edicts and commands, it was not allowed to the Roman senate or
people to come to the assistance of the republic, I will not say by their votes and their
authority, but even by their grief and their mourning garb.
Did you think that you were consul at Capua, a city where there was
once the abode of arrogance, or at Rome, where all the consuls that ever existed before you
were obedient to the senate? Did you dare, when you were brought forward in the Flaminian
Circus, with your colleague, to say that you had always been merciful? by which expression you
declared that the senate and all virtuous men were cruel at the time that I warded off ruin
from the republic. You were a merciful man when you handed me over,—me, your own relation,—me,
whom at your comitia you had appointed as chief guardian of
the prerogative tribe, whose opinions on the calends of January you had asked then, bound and
helpless to the enemies of the republic! You repelled my son-in-law, your own kinsman; you
repelled your own near relation, my daughter, with most haughty and inhuman language, from
your knees; and you, also, O man of singular mercy and clemency, when I, together with the
republic, had fallen, not by a blow aimed by a tribune, but by a wound inflicted by a consul,
behaved with such wickedness and such intemperance, that you did not allow one single hour to
elapse between the time of my disaster and your plunder; you did not allow even time for the
lamentations and groans of the city to die away.
It was not yet openly known that the republic had fallen, when you thought fit to arrange
its interment. At one and the same moment my house was plundered and set on fire, my property
from my house on the Palatine Hill was taken to the house of the consul who was my neighbour,
the goods from my Tusculan villa were also taken to the house of my neighbour there, the other
consul; when, while the same mob of artisans were giving their votes, the same gladiator
proposing and passing laws, the forum being unoccupied, not only by virtuous men, but even by
free citizens, and being entirely empty, the Roman people being utterly ignorant what was
going on, the senate being beaten down and crushed, there being two wicked and impious
consuls, the treasury, the prisoners, the legions, allies and military commands, were given
away as they pleased.
But the ruin wrought by these consuls you, O consuls, have prevented
from spreading further by your virtue, being assisted as you have been by the admirable
loyalty and diligence of the tribunes of the people and the praetors.
What shall I say of that most illustrious man, Titus Annius? This was
Titus Annius Milo, by which last name he is best known to us. He was tribune, and finding it
impossible to bring Clodius to justice in the legal way, resolved to deal with him according
to his own fashion, and bought a troop of gladiators, at the head of whom he had daily
skirmishes with him in the streets. or, who can ever speak of such a citizen in an
adequate or worthy manner? For when he saw that a wicked citizen, or, it would be more correct
to say, a domestic enemy, required (if it were only possible to employ the laws) to be crushed
by judicial proceedings, or that if violence hindered and put an end to the courts of justice,
in that case audacity must be put down by virtue, madness by courage, rashness by wisdom, hand
by hand, violence by violence, he first of all prosecuted him for violence; when he saw that
the very man whom he was prosecuting had destroyed the courts of justice, he took care that he
should not be able to carry everything by violence. He taught us that neither private houses,
nor temples, nor the forum, nor the senate-house could be defended from the bands of domestic
robbers without the greatest gallantry, and large resources and numerous forces. He was the
first man after my departure who relieved the virtuous from fear, and deprived the audacious
of hope; who delivered this august body from alarm, and the city from slavery.
And Publius Sextius following the same line of conduct with equal virtue, courage, and
loyalty, thought that there were no enmities, no efforts of violence, no attacks, no dangers
even to his life, which it became him to shun, in defence of my safety, of your authority, and
of the constitution of the state. He, by his diligence, so recommended the cause of the
senate, thrown into disorder as it was by the harangues of wicked men, to the multitude, that
your name soon became the most popular of all names, your authority the object of the greatest
affection to all men. He defended me by every means that a tribune of the people could employ;
and supported me by every sort of kind attention, just as if he had been my own brother; by
his clients, and freedmen, and household, and resources, and letters, I was so much supported,
that he seemed to be not only my assistant under, but my partner in calamity.