The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero
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possessed with such weakness of mind as to think it not possible for the gods to be sufficiently propitiated, unless you intruded yourself into the religious ceremonies of women? Whom of your ancestors did you ever hear of, of those men who were attentive to their private religious duties, and who presided over the public priesthoods, who were present when a sacrifice was being offered to the Bona Dea? No one; not even that great man who became blind: from which it may be easily seen that in this life men form many erroneous opinions; when he, who had not knowingly seen anything which it was impious to see, lost his eye-sight; but in the case of that fellow, who has polluted the ceremonies, not only by his presence, but also by his incestuous guilt and adultery, all the punishment due to his eyes has fallen on the blindness of his mind. Can you, O priests, avoid being influenced by the authority of this man, so chaste, so religious, so holy, so pious a man, when he says that he, with his own hands, pulled down the house of a most virtuous citizen, and with the same hands consecrated it to the gods?
What was that consecration of yours? “I had carried a bill,” says he, “to make it lawful for me to act.” What? had you not inserted this clause in it, that if there was anything contrary to what was right in the bill, it should be invalid? Will you then, O priests, by your decision, establish the point that it is right that the home of every one of you, and your altars, and your hearths, and your household gods, should be at the mercy of the caprice of the tribunes? that it is right for any one, not only to throw down the house of that man whom he may have chosen to attack with a body of excited men, and may have driven away by violence,—which is an act of present insanity, like the effect of a sudden terror,—but for him to bind that man and property for all future time by the everlasting obligation of religion?
XLI. I indeed, O priests, have always understood that in undertaking religious obligations the main thing is to interpret what the intention of the immortal gods appears to be. Nor is piety towards the gods anything but an honourable opinion of their divine power and intentions, while you suppose that nothing is required by them which is unjust or dishonourable. That disgrace to the city could not find one single man, not even when he had everything in his power, to whom he could adjudge, or deliver, or make a present of my house; though he himself was inflamed with a great desire for that spot and for the house, and though, on that account alone, that excellent man had brought in that exceedingly just bill of his to make himself master of my property, yet even in the height of his madness he did not dare to take possession of my house, with the desire of which he had been so excited. Do you think that the immortal gods were willing to remove into the house of that man to whose labour and prudence it was owing that they still retained possession of their own temples, dismantled and ruined as it was by the nefarious robbery of a most worthless man? There is not one citizen in this numerous people, out of that polluted and blood-thirsty band of Publius Clodius, who laid hands on a single article of my property, or who did not in that storm defend it as if it had been his own. But they who caught the infection and polluted themselves with any partnership in the plunder, or in the purchase of anything, were not able to escape every sort of condemnation, whether public or private. Of this property then, of which no one touched a single thing without being accounted in every one’s opinion one of the wickedest of men, did the immortal gods covet my house? Did that beautiful Liberty of yours turn out my household gods and the family divinities of my hearth, in order to be established there herself by you, as if in a conquered country? What is there more holy, what is there more carefully fenced round with every description of religious respect, than the house of every individual citizen? Here are his altars, here are his hearths, here are his household gods: here all his sacred rites, all his religious ceremonies are preserved. This is the asylum of every one, so holy a spot that it is impious to drag any one from it.
XLII. And on this account that man’s madness is the more to be rejected by your ears; who has not only attacked in a manner contrary to all religion those things which our ancestors intended to be safe and hallowed among us, as guarded by the sanction of religion, but has even made use of the name of religion to overturn them.
And what goddess is she whom you have established there? She ought indeed to be the good goddess; since she has been consecrated by you. “She is Liberty,” says he. Have you then established her in my house whom you have driven out of the whole city? Did you, after you had denied that your colleagues,—men invested with the highest power,—were free; after you had closed all access to the temple of Castor against every one; after you had ordered in the hearing of the Roman people, this most illustrious man, of a most noble family, who has received the greatest honours from the Roman people, a priest, and a man of consular rank, a citizen of singular gentleness and modesty of character, (a man of whom I cannot sufficiently wonder how you can dare to look him in the face,) to be kicked and trampled on by your attendants; after you had driven him out of the city without being condemned, having proposed a most tyrannical privilegium against him; after you had confined the first man in the whole earth to his house; after you had occupied the forum with armed bands of profligate men;—did you then place the image of Liberty in that house, which was of itself a proof of your most cruel tyranny and of the miserable slavery of the Roman people? Was he the man whom Liberty ought, of all men in the world, to have driven from his house, whose existence was the only thing that prevented the whole city from coming under the power of slaves?
XLIII. But from whence was that Liberty brought? for I sought for her diligently. She is said to have been a prostitute at Tanagra. At no great distance from Tanagra a marble image of her was placed on her tomb. A certain man of noble birth, not altogether unconnected with this holy priest of Liberty, carried off this statue to decorate his ædileship. He had in truth cherished the idea of surpassing all his predecessors in the splendour of his appointments. Therefore he brought away to his own house, like a prudent man as he was, all the statues and pictures, all the decorations of any sort, that remained in the temples and public places, out of all Greece and out of all the islands, for the sake of doing honour to the Roman people. After he understood that he might give up the ædileship, and still be appointed prætor by Lucius Piso the consul, provided he had any competitor whose name began with the same Ref. 017 letter as his own, he stowed away what he had prepared for his ædileship in two places, partly in his strong-box, and partly in his gardens. He gave the statue which he had taken from the prostitute’s tomb to that fellow, because it was much more suited to such people as he is than to Public Liberty. Can any one dare to profane this goddess, the statue of a harlot, the ornament of a tomb, carried off by a thief, and consecrated by a sacrilegious infidel? Is it she who is to drive me from my house? Is she the avenger of this afflicted city? Is she to be adorned with the spoils of the republic? Is she to be a part of that monument which has been erected so as to be a token of the oppression of the senate, and to keep alive for ever the recollection of this man’s infamy?
O Quintus Catulus! (Shall I appeal rather to the father, or to the son? The memory of the son is fresher, and more closely connected with my exploits.) How greatly were you mistaken when you thought that I should find the greatest possible reward—a reward, too, becoming every day greater—in this republic! when you said that it was impossible for there to be at the same time in this city two consuls hostile to the republic. Two have been found who gave over the senate bound hand and foot to a frantic tribune; who, by edicts and positive commands, prohibited the conscript fathers from entreating the people and coming to it as suppliants on my behalf; who looked on while my house was being sacked and plundered; who ordered the damaged relics of my property to be carried off to their own houses.
I come now to the father. You, O Quintus Catulus, chose the house of Marcus Fulvius, though he was the father-in-law of your own brother, to be the monument of your victories, in order that every recollection of that man who had embraced designs destructive of the republic should be entirely removed from the eyes and eradicated from the minds of men. If, when you were building that portico, any one had said to you that the time would come when that tribune of the people, who had despised the authority of the senate and the opinion of all virtuous men, should injure and overthrow your monument, while the consuls were not looking on only, but even assisting in the work, and should join it to the house of that citizen who as consul had defended the republic in obedience to the authority of the senate; would you not have answered that that could not possibly happen, unless the republic itself was previously overthrown?
XLIV. But remark the intolerable