The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4. Marcus Cicero
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of liberty so much an object of desire to our ancestors when Tarquinius was expelled, as, now that Antonius is driven away, the preservation of it is to us. Those men had learnt to obey kings ever since the foundation of the city, but we from the time when the kings were driven out have forgotten how to be slaves. And that Tarquinius, whom our ancestors expelled, was not either considered or called cruel or impious, but only The Proud. That vice which we have often borne in private individuals, our ancestors could not endure even in a king.
Lucius Brutus could not endure a proud king. Shall Decimus Brutus submit to the kingly power of a man who is wicked and impious? What atrocity did Tarquinius ever commit equal to the innumerable acts of the sort which Antonius has done and is still doing? Again, the kings were used to consult the senate; nor, as is the case when Antonius holds a senate, were armed barbarians ever introduced into the council of the king. The kings paid due regard to the auspices, which this man, though consul and augur, has neglected, not only by passing laws in opposition to the auspices, but also by making his colleague (whom he himself had appointed irregularly, and had falsified the auspices in order to do so) join in passing them. Again, what king was ever so preposterously impudent as to have all the profits, and kindnesses, and privileges of his kingdom on sale? But what immunity is there, what rights of citizenship, what rewards that this man has not sold to individuals, and to cities, and to entire provinces? We have never heard of anything base or sordid being imputed to Tarquinius. But at the house of this man gold was constantly being weighed out in the spinning room, and money was being paid, and in one single house every soul who had any interest in the business was selling the whole empire of the Roman people. We have never heard of any executions of Roman citizens by the orders of Tarquinius, but this man both at Suessa murdered the man whom he had thrown into prison, and at Brundusium massacred about three hundred most gallant men and most virtuous citizens. Lastly, Tarquinius was conducting a war in defence of the Roman people at the very time when he was expelled. Antonius was leading an army against the Roman people at the time when, being abandoned by the legions, he cowered at the name of Caesar and at his army, and neglecting the regular sacrifices, he offered up before daylight vows which he could never mean to perform, and at this very moment he is endeavouring to invade a province of the Roman people. The Roman people, therefore, has already received and is still looking for greater services at the hand of Decimus Brutus than our ancestors received from Lucius Brutus, the founder of this race and name which we ought to be so anxious to preserve.
V. But, while all slavery is miserable, to be slave to a man who is profligate, unchaste, effeminate, never, not even while in fear, sober, is surely intolerable. He, then, who keeps this man out of Gaul, especially by his own private authority, judges, and judges most truly, that he is not consul at all. We must take care, therefore, O conscript fathers, to sanction the private decision of Decimus Brutus by public authority. Nor, indeed, ought you to have thought Marcus Antonius consul at any time since the Lupercalia. For on the day when he, in the sight of the Roman people, harangued the mob, naked, perfumed, and drunk, and laboured moreover to put a crown on the head of his colleague, on that day he abdicated not only the consulship, but also his own freedom. At all events he himself must at once have become a slave, if Caesar had been willing to accept from him that ensign of royalty. Can I then think him a consul, can I think him a Roman citizen, can I think him a freeman, can I even think him a man, who on that shameful and wicked day showed what he was willing to endure while Caesar lived, and what he was anxious to obtain himself after he was dead?
Nor is it possible to pass over in silence the virtue and the firmness and the dignity of the province of Gaul. For that is the flower of Italy, that is the bulwark of the empire of the Roman people, that is the chief ornament of our dignity. But so perfect is the unanimity of the municipal towns and colonies of the province of Gaul, that all men in that district appear to have united together to defend the authority of this order, and the majesty of the Roman people. Wherefore, O tribunes of the people, although you have not actually brought any other business before us beyond the question of protection, in order that the consuls may be able to hold the senate with safety on the first of January, still you appear to me to have acted with great wisdom and great prudence in giving an opportunity of debating the general circumstances of the republic. For when you decided that the senate could not be held with safety without some protection or other, you at the same time asserted by that decision that the wickedness and audacity of Antonius was still continuing its practices within our walls.
VI. Wherefore, I will embrace every consideration in my opinion which I am now going to deliver, a course to which you, I feel sure, have no objection, in order that authority may be conferred by us on admirable generals, and that hope of reward may be held out by us to gallant soldiers, and that a formal decision may be come to, not by words only, but also by actions, that Antonius is not only not a consul, but is even an enemy. For if he be consul, then the legions which have deserted the consul deserve beating24 to death. Caesar is wicked, Brutus is impious, since they of their own heads have levied an army against the consul. But if new honours are to be sought out for the soldiers on account of their divine and immortal merits, and if it is quite impossible to show gratitude enough to the generals, who is there who must not think that man a public enemy, whose conduct is such that those who are in arms against him are considered the saviours of the republic?
Again, how insulting is he in his edicts! how ignorant! How like a barbarian! In the first place, how has he heaped abuse on Caesar, in terms drawn from his recollection of his own debauchery and profligacy. For where can we find any one who is chaster than this young man? who is more modest? where have we among our youth a more illustrious example of the old-fashioned strictness? Who, on the other hand, is more profligate than the man who abuses him? He reproaches the son of Caius Caesar with his want of noble blood, when even his natural25 father, if he had been alive, would have been made consul. His mother is a woman of Aricia. You might suppose he was saying a woman of Tralles, or of Ephesus. Just see how we all who come from the municipal towns—that is to say, absolutely all of us—are looked down upon; for how few of us are there who do not come from those towns? and what municipal town is there which he does not despise who looks with such contempt on Aricia; a town most ancient as to its antiquity; if we regard its rights, united with us by treaty; if we regard its vicinity, almost close to us; if we regard the high character of its inhabitants, most honourable? It is from Aricia that we have received the Voconian and Atinian laws; from Aricia have come many of those magistrates who have filled our curule chairs, both in our fathers' recollection and in our own; from Aricia have sprung many of the best and bravest of the Roman knights. But if you disapprove of a wife from Aricia, why do you approve of one from Tusculum? Although the father of this most virtuous and excellent woman, Marcus Atius Balbus, a man of the highest character, was a man of praetorian rank; but the father of your wife,—a good woman, at all events a rich one,—a fellow of the name of Bambalio, was a man of no account at all. Nothing could be lower than he was, a fellow who got his surname as a sort of insult, derived26 from the hesitation of his speech and the stolidity of his understanding. Oh, but your grandfather was nobly born. Yes, he was that Tuditanus who used to put on a cloak and buskins, and then go and scatter money from the rostra among the people. I wish he had bequeathed his contempt of money to his descendants! You have, indeed, a most glorious nobility of family! But how does it happen that the son of a woman of Aricia appears to you to be ignoble, when you are accustomed to boast of a descent on the mother's side which is precisely the same? 27Besides, what insanity is it for that man to say anything about the want of noble birth in men's wives, when his father married Numitoria of Fregellae, the daughter of a traitor, and when he himself has begotten children of the daughter of a freedman. However, those illustrious men Lucius Philippus, who has a wife who came from Aricia, and Caius Marcellus, whose wife is the daughter of an Arician, may look to this; and I am quite sure that they have no regrets on the score of the dignity of those admirable women.
VII. Moreover, Antonius proceeds to name Quintus Cicero, my brother's son, in his edict; and is so mad as not to perceive that the way in which he names him is a panegyric on him. For what could happen more desirable for this young man, than to be known by every one to be the partner of Caesar's counsels, and the enemy of the frenzy of Antonius? But this gladiator
Riddle (Dict. Lat. in voce) says, that this was the regular punishment for deserters, and was inflicted by their comrades.
Cnaeus Octavius, the real father of Octavius Caesar, had been praetor and governor of Macedonia, and was intending to stand for the consulship when he died.
Bambalio is derived from the Greek word [Greek: bambala] to lisp.
Julia, the mother of Antonius and sister of Lucius
Caesar, was also a native of Aricia.