Book: The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4

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And then his houses and gardens! Oh the cruel audacity! Did you dare
to enter into that house? Did you dare to cross that most sacred
threshold? and to show your most profligate countenance to the
household gods who protect that abode? A house which for a long time
no one could behold, no one could pass by without tears! Are you not
ashamed to dwell so long in that house? one in which, stupid and
ignorant as you are, still you can see nothing which is not painful to
you.

XXVIII. When you behold those beaks of ships in the vestibule, and
those warlike trophies, do you fancy that you are entering into a
house which belongs to you? It is impossible. Although you are devoid
of all sense and all feeling,--as in truth you are,--still you are
acquainted with yourself, and with your trophies, and with your
friends. Nor do I believe that you either waking or sleeping, can ever
act with quiet sense. It is impossible but that, were you ever so
drunk and frantic,--as in truth you are,--when the recollection of the
appearance of that illustrious man comes across you, you should be
roused from sleep by your fears, and often stirred up to madness if
awake. I pity even the walls and the roof. For what had that house
ever beheld except what was modest, except what proceeded from the
purest principles and from the most virtuous practice? For that man
was, O conscript fathers, as you yourselves know, not only illustrious
abroad, but also admirable at home; and not more praiseworthy for his
exploits in foreign countries, than for his domestic arrangements. Now
in his house every bedchamber is a brothel, and every dining-room a
cookshop. Although he denies this:--Do not, do not make inquiries.
He is become economical. He desired that mistress of his to take
possession of whatever belonged to her, according to the laws of the
Twelve Tables. He has taken his keys from her, and turned her out of
doors. What a well-tried citizen! of what proved virtue is he! the
most honourable passage in whose life is the one when he divorced
himself from this actress.

But how constantly does he harp on the expression "the consul
Antonius!" This amounts to say "that most debauched consul," "that
most worthless of men, the consul." For what else is Antonius? For
if any dignity were implied in the name, then, I imagine, your
grandfather would sometimes have called himself "the consul Antonius."
But he never did. My colleague too, your own uncle, would have called
himself so. Unless you are the only Antonius. But I pass over those
offences which have no peculiar connexion with the part you took
in harassing the republic; I return to that in which you bore so
principal a share,--that is, to the civil war; and it is mainly owing
to you that that was originated, and brought to a head, and carried
on.

XXIX. Though you yourself took no personal share in it, partly through
timidity, partly through profligacy, you had tasted, or rather had
sucked in, the blood of fellow-citizens: you had been in the battle
of Pharsalia as a leader; you had slain Lucius Domitius, a most
illustrious and high-born man; you had pursued and put to death in the
most barbarous manner many men who had escaped from the battle, and
whom Caesar would perhaps have saved, as he did some others.

And after having performed these exploits, what was the reason why you
did not follow Caesar into Africa; especially when so large a portion
of the war was still remaining? And accordingly, what place did you
obtain about Caesar's person after his return from Africa? What was
your rank? He whose quaestor you had been when general, whose master of
the horse when he was dictator, to whom you had been the chief cause
of war, the chief instigator of cruelty, the sharer of his plunder,
his son, as you yourself said, by inheritance, proceeded against you
for the money which you owed for the house and gardens, and for
the other property which you had bought at that sale. At first you
answered fiercely enough, and that I may not appear prejudiced against
you in every particular, you used a tolerably just and reasonable
argument. "What, does Caius Caesar demand money of me? why should he do
so, any more than I should claim it of him? Was he victorious without
my assistance? No, and he never could have been. It was I who supplied
him with a pretext for civil war, it was I who proposed mischievous
laws, it was I who took up arms against the consuls and generals of
the Roman people, against the senate and people of Rome, against the
gods of the country, against its altars and healths, against the
country itself. Has he conquered for himself alone? Why should not
those men whose common work the achievement is, have the booty also in
common?" You were only claiming your right, but what had that to do
with it? He was the more powerful of the two.

Therefore, stopping all your expostulations, he sent his soldiers to
you, and to your sureties, when all on a sudden out came that splendid
catalogue of yours. How men did laugh! That there should be so vast a
catalogue, that their should be such a numerous and various list of
possessions, of all of which, with the exception of a portion of
Misenum, there was nothing which the man who was putting them up to
sale could call his own. And what a miserable sight was the auction. A
little apparel of Pompeius's, and that stained, a few silver vessels
belonging to the same man, all battered, some slaves in wretched
condition, so that we grieved that there was anything remaining to be
seen of these miserable relics. This auction, however, the heirs of
Lucius Rubrius prevented from proceeding, being armed with a decree of
Caesar to that effect. The spendthrift was embarrassed. He did not know
which way to turn. It was at this very time that an assassin sent
by him was said to have been detected with a dagger in the house of
Caesar. And of this Caesar himself complained in the senate, inveighing
openly against you. Caesar departs to Spain, having granted you a few
days delay for making the payment, on account of your poverty. Even
then you do not follow him. Had so good a gladiator as you retired
from business so early? Can any one then fear a man who was as timid
as this man in upholding his party, that is, in upholding his own
fortunes?

XXX. After some time he at last went into Spain; but, as he says, he
could not arrive there in safety. How then did Dolabella manage to
arrive there? Either, O Antonius, that cause ought never to have
been undertaken, or when you had undertaken it, it should have
been maintained to the end. Thrice did Caesar fight against his
fellow-citizens; in Thessaly, in Africa, and in Spain. Dolabella was
present at all these battles. In the battle in Spain he even received
a wound. If you ask my opinion, I wish he had not been there. But
still, if his design at first was blameable, his consistency and
firmness were praiseworthy. But what shall we say of you? In the first
place, the children of Cnaeus Pompeius sought to be restored to their
country. Well, this concerned the common interests of the whole party.
Besides that, they sought to recover their household gods, the gods of
their country, their altars, their hearths, the tutelar gods of their
family; all of which you had seized upon. And when they sought to
recover those things by force of arms which belonged to them by the
laws, who was it most natural--(although in unjust and unnatural
proceedings what can there be that is natural?)--still, who was it
most natural to expect would fight against the children of Cnaeus
Pompeius? Who? Why, you who had bought their property. Were you at
Narbo to be sick over the tables of your entertainers, while Dolabella
was fighting your battles in Spain?

And what a return was that of yours from Narbo? He even asked why
I had returned so suddenly from my expedition. I have just briefly
explained to you, O conscript fathers, the reason of my return. I was
desirous, if I could, to be of service to the republic even before the
first of January. For, as to your question, how I had returned; in the
first place, I returned by daylight, not in the dark; in the second
place, I returned in shoes, and in my Roman gown, not in any Gallic
slippers, or barbarian mantle. And even now you keep looking at me;
and, as it seems, with great anger. Surely you would be reconciled
to me if you knew how ashamed I am of your worthlessness, which you
yourself are not ashamed of. Of all the profligate conduct of all the
world, I never saw, I never heard of any more shameful than yours. You
who fancied yourself a master of the horse, when you were standing
for, or I should rather say begging for the consulship for the
ensuing year, ran in Gallic slippers and a barbarian mantle about the
municipal towns and colonies of Gaul from which we used to demand the
consulship when the consulship was stood for and not begged for.

XXXI. But mark now the trifling character of the fellow. When about
the tenth hour of the day he had arrived at Red Rocks, he skulked into
a little petty wine-shop, and, hiding there, kept on drinking till
evening. And from thence getting into a gig and being driven rapidly
to the city, he came to his own house with his head veiled. "Who are
you?" says the porter. "An express from Marcus." He is at once taken
to the woman for whose sake he had come; and he delivered the letter
to her. And when she had read it with tears, (for it was written in
a very amorous style, but the main subject of the letter was that he
would have nothing to do with that actress for the future; that he
had discarded all his love for her, and transferred it to his
correspondent,) when she, I say, wept plentifully, this soft-hearted
man could bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself
on her neck. Oh the worthless man! (for what else can I call him?
there is no more suitable expression for me to use,) was it for this
that you disturbed the city by nocturnal alarms, and Italy with
fears of many days' duration, in order that you might show yourself
unexpectedly, and that a woman might see you before she hoped to do
so? And he had at home a pretence of love; but out of doors a cause
more discreditable still, namely, lest Lucius Plancus should sell up
his sureties. But after you had been produced in the assembly by one
of the tribunes of the people, and had replied that you had come on
your own private business, you made even the people full of jokes
against you. But, however, we have said too much about trifles. Let us
come to more important subjects.

XXXII. You went a great distance to meet Caesar on his return from
Spain. You went rapidly, you returned rapidly in order that we might
see that, if you were not brave, you were at least active. You again
became intimate with him; I am sure I do not know how. Caesar had this
peculiar characteristic; whoever he knew to be utterly ruined by debt,
and needy, even if he knew him also to be an audacious and worthless
man, he willingly admitted him to his intimacy. You then, being
admirably recommended to him by these circumstances, were ordered to
be appointed consul, and that too as his own colleague. I do not make
any complaint against Dolabella, who was at that time acting under
compulsion, and was cajoled and deceived. But who is there who does
not know with what great perfidy both of you treated Dolabella in that
business? Caesar induced him to stand for the consulship. After having
promised it to him, and pledged himself to aid him, he prevented
his getting it, and transferred it to himself. And you endorsed his
treachery with your own eagerness.

The first of January arrives. We are convened in the senate. Dolabella
inveighed against him with much more fluency and premeditation than I
am doing now. And what things were they which he said in his anger, O
ye good gods! First of all, after Caesar had declared that before he
departed he would order Dolabella to be made consul, (and they deny
that he was a king who was always doing and saying something of this
sort,)--but after Caesar had said this, then this virtuous augur said
that he was invested with a pontificate of that sort that he was able,
by means of the auspices, either to hinder or to vitiate the comitia,
just as he pleased; and he declared that he would do so. And here, in
the first place, remark the incredible stupidity of the man. For what
do you mean? Could you not just as well have done what you said you
had now the power to do by the privileges with which that pontificate
had invested you, even if you were not an augur, if you were consul?
Perhaps you could even do it more easily. For we augurs have only the
power of announcing that the auspices are being observed, but the
consuls and other magistrates have the right also of observing them
whenever they choose. Be it so. You said this out of ignorance. For
one must not demand prudence from a man who is never sober. But still
remark his impudence. Many months before, he said in the senate that
he would either prevent the comitia from assembling for the election
of Dolabella by means of the auspices, or that he would do what he
actually did do. Can any one divine beforehand what defect there will
be in the auspices, except the man who has already determined to
observe the heavens? which in the first place it is forbidden by law
to do at the time of the comitia. And if any one has been observing
the heavens, he is bound to give notice of it, not after the comitia
are assembled, but before they are held. But this man's ignorance is
joined to impudence, nor does he know what an augur ought to know, nor
do what a modest man ought to do. And just recollect the whole of his
conduct during his consulship from that day up to the ides of March.
What lictor was ever so humble, so abject? He himself had no power at
all; he begged everything of others; and thrusting his head into the
hind part of his litter, he begged favours of his colleagues, to sell
them himself afterwards.

XXXIII. Behold, the day of the comitia for the election of Dolabella
arrives. The prerogative century draws its lot. He is quiet. The vote
is declared; he is still silent. The first class is called.[19]
Its vote is declared. Then, as is the usual course, the votes are
announced. Then the second class. And all this is done faster than I
have told it. When the business is over, that excellent augur (you
would say he must be Caius Laelius,) says,--"We adjourn it to another
day." Oh the monstrous impudence of such a proceeding! What had you
seen? what had you perceived? what had you heard? For you did not say
that you had been observing the heavens, and indeed you do not say
so this day. That defect then has arisen, which you on the first of
January had already foreseen would arise, and which you had predicted
so long before. Therefore, in truth, you have made a false declaration
respecting the auspices, to your own great misfortune, I hope, rather
than to that of the republic. You laid the Roman people under the
obligations of religion; you as augur interrupted an augur; you as
consul interrupted a consul by a false declaration concerning the
auspices.

I will say no more, lest I should seem to be pulling to pieces the
acts of Dolabella; which must inevitably sometime or other be
brought before our college. But take notice of the arrogance
and insolence of the fellow. As long as you please, Dolabella
is a consul irregularly elected; again, while you please,
he is a consul elected with all proper regard to the auspices. If it
means nothing when an augur gives this notice in those words in which
you gave notice, then confess that you, when you said,--"We adjourn
this to another day," were not sober. But if those words have any
meaning, then I, an augur, demand of my colleague to know what that
meaning is.

But lest by any chance, while enumerating his numerous exploits, our
speech should pass over the finest action of Marcus Antonius, let us
come to the Lupercalia.

XXXIV. He does not dissemble, O conscript fathers; it is plain that he
is agitated; he perspires; he turns pale. Let him do what he pleases,
provided he is not sick, and does not behave as he did in the Minucian
colonnade. What defence can be made for such beastly behaviour? I
wish to hear, that I may see the fruit of those high wages of that
rhetorician, of that land given in Leontini. Your colleague was
sitting in the rostra, clothed in purple robe, on a golden chair,
wearing a crown. You mount the steps; you approach his chair; (if you
were a priest of Pan, you ought to have recollected that you were
consul too;) you display a diadem. There is a groan over the whole
forum. Where did the diadem come from? For you had not picked it up
when lying on the ground, but you had brought it from home with you,
a premeditated and deliberately planned wickedness. You placed the
diadem on his head amid the groans of the people; he rejected it amid
great applause. You then alone, O wicked man, were found, both to
advise the assumption of kingly power, and to wish to have him for
your master who was your colleague; and also to try what the Roman
people might be able to bear and to endure. Moreover, you even sought
to move his pity; you threw yourself at his feet as a suppliant;
begging for what? to be a slave? You might beg it for yourself, when
you had lived in such a way from the time that you were a boy that you
could bear everything, and would find no difficulty in being a slave;
but certainly you had no commission from the Roman people to try for
such a thing for them.

Oh how splendid was that eloquence of yours, when you harangued the
people stark naked! What could be more foul than this? more shameful
than this? more deserving of every sort of punishment? Are you waiting
for me to prick you more? This that I am saying must tear you and
bring blood enough if you have any feeling at all. I am afraid that I
may be detracting from the glory of some most eminent men. Still my
indignation shall find a voice. What can be more scandalous than for
that man to live who placed a diadem on a man's head, when every one
confesses that that man was deservedly slain who rejected it? And,
moreover, he caused it to be recorded in the annals, under the head
of Lupercalia, "That Marcus Antonius, the consul, by command of the
people, had offered the kingdom to Caius Caesar, perpetual dictator;
and that Caesar had refused to accept it." I now am not much surprised
at your seeking to disturb the general tranquillity; at your hating
not only the city but the light of day; and at your living with a pack
of abandoned robbers, disregarding the day, and yet regarding nothing
beyond the day.[20] For where can you be safe in peace? What place can
there be for you where laws and courts of justice have sway, both of
which you, as far as in you lay, destroyed by the substitution of
kingly power? Was it for this that Lucius Tarquinius was driven out;
that Spurius Cassius, and Spurius Maelius, and Marcus Manlius were
slain; that many years afterwards a king might be established at Rome
by Marcus Antonius, though the bare idea was impiety? However, let us
return to the auspices.

XXXV. With respect to all the things which Caesar was intending to
do in the senate on the ides of March, I ask whether you have done
anything? I heard, indeed, that you had come down prepared, because
you thought that I intended to speak about your having made a false
statement respecting the auspices, though it was still necessary for
us to respect them. The fortune of the Roman people saved us from that
day. Did the death of Caesar also put an end to your opinion respecting
the auspices? But I have come to mention that occasion which must
be allowed to precede those matters which I had begun to discuss.
What a flight was that of yours! What alarm was yours on that
memorable day! How, from the consciousness of your wickedness,
did you despair of your life! How, while flying, were you enabled
secretly to get home by the kindness of those men who wished
to save you, thinking you would show more sense than you do! O
how vain have at all times been my too true predictions of the future!
I told those deliverers of ours in the Capitol, when they wished me to
go to you to exhort you to defend the republic, that as long as you
were in fear you would promise everything, but that as soon as you
had emancipated yourself from alarm you would be yourself again.
Therefore, while the rest of the men of consular rank were going
backwards and forwards to you, I adhered to my opinion, nor did I see
you at all that day, or the next; nor did I think it possible for an
alliance between virtuous citizens and a most unprincipled enemy to be
made, so as to last, by any treaty or engagement whatever. The third
day I came into the temple of Tellus, even then very much against my
will, as armed men were blockading all the approaches. What a day was
that for you, O Marcus Antonius! Although you showed yourself all on a
sudden an enemy to me; still I pity you for having envied yourself.

XXXVI. What a man, O ye immortal gods! and how great a man might
you have been, if you had been able to preserve the inclination you
displayed that day;--we should still have peace which was made then by
the pledge of a hostage, a boy of noble birth, the grandson of Marcus
Bambalio. Although it was fear that was then making you a good
citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty; your own audacity,
which never departs from you as long as you are free from fear, has
made you a worthless one. Although even at that time, when they
thought you an excellent man, though I indeed differed from that
opinion, you behaved with the greatest wickedness while presiding at
the funeral of the tyrant, if that ought to be called a funeral. All
that fine panegyric was yours, that commiseration was yours, that
exhortation was yours. It was you--you, I say--who hurled those
firebrands, both those with which your friend himself was nearly
burnt, and those by which the house of Lucius Bellienus was set
on fire and destroyed. It was you who let loose those attacks of
abandoned men, slaves for the most part, which we repelled by violence
and our own personal exertions; it was you who set them on to attack
our houses. And yet you, as if you had wiped off all the soot and
smoke in the ensuing days, carried those excellent resolutions in the
Capitol, that no document conferring any exemption, or granting any
favour, should be published after the ides of March. You recollect
yourself, what you said about the exiles; you know what you said
about the exemption; but the best thing of all was, that you for ever
abolished the name of the dictatorship in the republic. Which act
appeared to show that you had conceived such a hatred of kingly power
that you took away all fear of it for the future, on account of him
who had been the last dictator.

To other men the republic now seemed established, but it did not
appear so at all to me, as I was afraid of every sort of shipwreck,
as long as you were at the helm. Have I been deceived? or, was it
possible for that man long to continue unlike himself? While you were
all looking on, documents were fixed up over the whole Capitol, and
exemptions were being sold, not merely to individuals, but to entire
states. The freedom of the city was also being given now not to single
persons only, but to whole provinces. Therefore, if these acts are to
stand,--and stand they cannot if the republic stands too,--then, O
conscript fathers, you have lost whole provinces; and not the revenues
only, but the actual empire of the Roman people has been diminished by
a market this man held in his own house.

XXXVII. Where are the seven hundred millions of sesterces which were
entered in the account-books which are in the temple of Ops? a sum
lamentable indeed, as to the means by which it was procured, but still
one which, if it were not restored to those to whom it belonged, might
save us from taxes. And how was it, that when you owed forty millions
of sesterces on the fifteenth of March, you had ceased to owe them
by the first of April? Those things are quite countless which were
purchased of different people, not without your knowledge; but there
was one excellent decree posted up in the Capitol affecting king
Deiotarus, a most devoted friend to the Roman people. And when that
decree was posted up, there was no one who, amid all his indignation,
could restrain his laughter. For who ever was a more bitter enemy to
another than Caesar was to Deiotarus? He was as hostile to him as he
was to this order, to the equestrian order, to the people of Massilia,
and to all men whom he knew to look on the republic of the Roman
people with attachment. But this man, who neither present nor absent
could ever obtain from him any favour or justice while he was alive,
became quite an influential man with him when he was dead. When
present with him in his house he had called for him though he was his
host, he had made him give in his accounts of his revenue, he had
exacted money from him; he had established one of his Greek retainers
in his tetrarchy, and he had taken Armenia from him, which had been
given to him by the senate. While he was alive he deprived him of all
these things; now that he is dead, he gives them back again. And in
what words? At one time he says, "that it appears to him to be just,
..." at another, "that it appears not to be unjust...." What a strange
combination of words! But while alive, (I know this, for I always
supported Deiotarus, who was at a distance,) he never said that
anything which we were asking for, for him, appeared just to him. A
bond for ten millions of sesterces was entered into in the women's
apartment, (where many things have been sold, and are still
being sold,) by his ambassadors, well-meaning men, but timid and
inexperienced in business, without my advice or that of the rest of
the hereditary friends of the monarch. And I advise you to consider
carefully what you intend to do with reference to this bond. For the
king himself, of his own accord, without waiting for any of Caesar's
memoranda, the moment that he heard of his death, recovered his own
rights by his own courage and energy. He, like a wise man, knew that
this was always the law, that those men from whom the things which
tyrants had taken away had been taken, might recover them when the
tyrants were slain. No lawyer, therefore, not even he who is your
lawyer and yours alone, and by whose advice you do all these things,
will say that anything is due to you by virtue of that bond for those
things which had been recovered before that bond was executed. For he
did not purchase them of you; but, before you undertook to sell him
his own property, he had taken possession of it. He was a man--we,
indeed, deserve to be despised, who hate the author of the actions,
but uphold the actions themselves.

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