Philippicae

Do you think, O conscript fathers, that I would have voted for the resolution which you adopted against your own wills, of mingling funeral obsequies with supplications? of introducing inexplicable impiety into the republic? of decreeing supplications in honour of a dead man? I say nothing about who the man was. Even had he been that great Lucius Brutus who himself also delivered the republic from kingly power, and who has produced posterity nearly five hundred years after himself of similar virtue, and equal to similar achievements—even then I could not have been induced to join any dead man in a religious observance paid to the immortal gods; so that a supplication should be addressed by public authority to a man who has nowhere a sepulcher at which funeral obsequies may be celebrated.

I, O conscript fathers, should have delivered my opinion, which I could easily have defended against the Roman people, if any heavy misfortune had happened to the republic, such as war, or pestilence, or famine; some of which, indeed, do exist already, and I have my fears lest others are impending. But I pray that the immortal gods may pardon this act, both to the Roman people, which does not approve of it, and to this order, which voted it with great unwillingness. What? may I not speak of the other misfortunes of the republic?—At all events it is in my power, and it always will be in my power, to uphold my own dignity and to despise death. Let me have only the power to come into this house, and I will never shrink from the danger or declaring my opinion!

And, O conscript fathers, would that I had been able to be present on the first of August; not that I should have been able to do any good, but to prevent any one saying that not no senator of consular rank (as was the case then) was found worthy of that honour and worthy of the republic. And this circumstance indeed gives me great pain, that men who have enjoyed the most honourable distinctions which the Roman people can confer; did not second Lucius Piso, the proposer of an excellent opinion. Is it for this that the Roman people made us consuls, that, being placed on the loftiest and most

honourable step of dignity, we should consider the republic of no importance? Not only did no single man of consular dignity indicate his agreement with Lucius Piso by his voice, but they did not venture even to look as if they agreed with him. What, in the name of all that is horrible, is the meaning of this voluntary slavery?—Some submission may have been unavoidable: nor do I require this from every one of the men who deliver their opinions from the consular bench; the case of those men whose silence I pardon is different from that of those whose expression of their sentiments I require; and I do grieve that those men have fallen under the suspicion of the Roman people, not only as being afraid,—which of itself would be shameful enough,—but as having different private causes for being wanting to their proper dignity.

Wherefore, in the first place, I both feel and acknowledge great obligations to Lucius Piso, who considered not what he was able to effect in the republic, but what it was his own duty to do; and, in the next place, I entreat of you, O conscript fathers, even if you have not quite the courage to agree with my speech and to adopt my advice, at all events to listen to me with kindness as you have always hitherto done.

In the first place, then, I declare my opinion that the acts of Caesar ought to be maintained: not that I approve of them; (for who indeed can do that?) but because I think that we ought above all things to have regard to peace and tranquillity. I wish that Antonius himself were present, provided he had no advocates with him. But I suppose he may be allowed to feel unwell, a privilege which he refused to allow me yesterday. He would then explain to me, or rather to you, O conscript fathers, to what extent he himself defended the acts of Caesar. Are all the acts of Caesar which may exist in the bits of note-books, and memoranda, and loose papers, produced on his single authority, and indeed not even produced, but only recited, to be ratified? And shall the acts which he caused to be engraved on brass, in which he declared that the edicts and laws passed by the people were valid for ever, be considered as of no power? I think, indeed, that there is nothing so well entitled to be called the acts of Caesar as Caesar's laws. Suppose he gave any one a promise, is that to be ratified, even if it were a promise that

he himself was unable to perform? As, in fact, he has failed to perform many promises made to many people. And a great many more of those promises have been found since his death, than the number of all the services which he conferred on and did to people during all the years that he was alive would amount to.

But all those things I do not change, I do not meddle with. Nay, I defend all his good acts with the greatest earnestness. Would that the money remained in the temple of Ops! Bloodstained, indeed, it may be, but still needful at these times, since it is not restored to those to whom it really belongs.[*](See Philippic 2.)Let that, however, be squandered too, if it is so written in his acts. Is there anything whatever that can be called so peculiarly the act of that man who; while clad in the robe of peace, was yet invested with both civil and military command in the republic, as a law of his? Ask for the acts of Gracchus, the Sempronian laws will be brought forward; ask for those of Sulla, you will have the Cornelian laws. What more? In what acts did the third consulship of Cnaeus Pompeius consist? Why, in his laws. And if you could ask Caesar himself what he had done in the city and in the garb of peace, he would reply that he had passed many excellent laws; but his memoranda he would either alter or not produce at all; or, if he did produce them, he would not class them among his acts. But, however, I allow even these things to pass for acts; at some things I am content to wink; but I think it intolerable that the acts of Caesar in the most important instances, that is to say, in his laws, are to he annulled for their sake.