The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero
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fearless and most excellent of all men, consecrate your property by your own precedent? And if, because you yourself are concerned, you say that that action ought not to be ratified, did you in that splendid tribuneship of yours establish laws which, the moment that they were turned against yourself, you repudiated, though you made use of them to ruin other people? If that consecration be legal, then what is there in your property which can be applied to other than holy uses? Or has a consecration no power, while a dedication draws with it the sanctions of religion? What then was the meaning of your summoning that flute-player to be a witness? What was the object of your brazier? What became of your prayers? What was the meaning of all your old-fashioned expressions? Did you wish to lie, to deceive, to abuse the divine reverence due to the immortal gods, in order to strike terror into men? For if that act is once ratified,—I say nothing about Gabinius,—most certainly your house and whatever else you have is consecrated to Ceres. But if that was a joke of yours, what can be more impure than you who have polluted every sort of religion by lies and adulteries? “Well, I confess,” says he, “that in the case of Gabinius I did behave wickedly.” You see now that the punishment which was established by you with reference to another has been turned against yourself. But, O man, O you who are the very model of every possible crime and wickedness, do you deny with respect to me that which you admit in the case of Gabinius,—a man the immodesty of whose childhood, the lust of whose youth, the disgrace and indigence of whose subsequent life, the open robberies of whose consulship, we have seen,—a man to whom even calamity itself could not happen undeservedly? And do you say that that was a more solemn act which you performed with one young man alone for your witness, than it would have been if you had had the whole assembly in that character? “Oh,” says he, “a dedication is an act which carries the greatest possible quantity of sanctity with it.”
XLIX. Does not Numa Pompilius appear to be speaking to you? Learn his speech by heart, O priests, and flamens. Do you too, O king of the sacrifices, learn of the man of your own family: although, indeed, he has quitted that family; but still learn from a man entirely devoted to religious observances, and just, and deeply skilled in all questions of religion. What? in the case of a dedication do not people inquire who says such and such a thing, and what he says, and how? Do you so confuse and mix up these matters, that whoever chooses can dedicate whatever he chooses, and in whatever manner he chooses? Who were you who performed the dedication? By what right did you do so? By what law? According to what precedent? By what power? When and where had the Roman people appointed you to manage that business? For I see that there is an old tribunitian law, which forbids any one to consecrate any house, land, or altar, without the order of the Roman people. Quintus Papirius, who proposed this law, did not perceive nor suspect that there would be danger lest hereafter the houses or possessions of citizens who had not been condemned might be consecrated. For that could not lawfully be done; nor had any one ever done such a thing; nor was there any reason why a prohibition should be issued, the effect of which appeared likely to be not so much to deter people from an action as to remind them of it. But because buildings were consecrated,—I do not mean the houses of private persons, but those which are called sacred buildings,—and because lands were consecrated, not in such a way that any one who chose might consecrate our farms, but that a general might consecrate lands taken from the enemy; and because altars were erected, which carried with them a degree of sanctity to the place in which they were consecrated; he forbade all these things to be done unless the people ordered them. And if your interpretation of these edicts be that they were framed with reference to our houses and lands, I make no objection. But I ask, what law was passed that you should consecrate my house? where this power was given to you? and by what right you did it? And I am not now arguing about religion, but about the property of all of us; nor about the sacerdotal law, but about the common law.
L. The Papirian law forbids any building to be consecrated without the command of the people. Grant that that law refers to our houses, and not to the public temples. Show me one word of consecration in that law of yours—if it is a law, and not merely an expression of your wickedness and cruelty. But if, then, at the time of that shipwreck of the republic, everything necessary had occurred to you, or if the man who drew that law for you at the time of that general conflagration of the state had not been making contracts with the Byzantine exiles and with the royal ambassadors, but had his mind at leisure to attend to (what I will not call the ordinances, but) the monstrous papers which he was drawing, then you would have done what you wanted, if not in fact, at all events as far as regular legal language went. But at one and the same time bonds for money were being drawn, treaties with provinces were being entered into, titles of kings were being put up for sale, the numbering of all the slaves was going on over the whole city street by street, enemies were being reconciled, new commands were being given to the Roman youth, poison was being prepared for that unhappy Quintus Seius, designs were being formed for assassinating Cnæus Pompeius, the bulwark and protector of the empire, and to prevent the senate from having any power, and to cause the good to mourn for ever, and to reduce the captive republic, by the treachery of the consuls, to a state of subjection to the violence of the tribunes. When such numerous and such important designs were all on foot, it is no wonder, especially while you were both in such a state of frenzy and blindness, that many things escaped both his notice and yours.
But take notice now, what the effect of this Papirian law is in such a case as this; not such a case as you bring forward, full of wickedness and frenzy. Quintus Marcius the censor had made a statue of Concord, and had erected it in a public place. When Caius Cassius the censor had transported it into the senate-house, he consulted your college, and asked whether there was any reason why he should not dedicate that statue and the senate-house to Concord.
LI. I beseech you, O priests, compare man with man, the one time with the other, this case with that case. The one man was a censor of the greatest moderation and of the highest character; the other was a tribune of the people, of preeminent wickedness and audacity. That period was one of tranquillity, when the people enjoyed a full measure of liberty, and the senate all its legitimate authority; but your time was a time when the liberty of the Roman people was oppressed, and when the authority of the senate was destroyed. The proposed measure was one full of justice, wisdom, and dignity. For the censor, to whose power (though you have abolished that) our ancestors chose to commit the decision respecting the dignity of each member of the senate, wished the statue of Concord to be in the senate-house, and wished also to dedicate the senate-house to that goddess. It was a noble intention, and one worthy of all praise. For he thought that by that measure he was enjoining that opinions should be delivered without party spirit or dissension, if he bound the place itself and the temple of public counsel by the religious reverence due to the goddess Concord. You, when you were keeping down the enslaved and oppressed city by the sword, by fear, by edicts, by privileges, by bands of abandoned men constantly present, and by the fear of the army which was absent, and by threats of bringing it up, and by the assistance of the consuls, and by your nefarious agreement with them, erected a statue of Liberty in a mocking and shameless spirit, rather than with even any pretence to religion. He was dedicating a thing in the senate-house, which he was able to dedicate without any inconvenience to any one. You have erected an image not of public Liberty, but of licentiousness, on what I may call the blood and bones of that citizen who of all others has deserved best of the republic. And moreover he referred his design to the sacred college: to whom did you refer yours? If you deliberated at all, if you had anything which you wished to expiate, or any domestic sacrifice which you desired to institute, still according to the ancient practice of other men you should have referred the matter to the priests. When you were beginning a new temple in the most beautiful spot in the city, with some wicked and unheard of object, did you not think that you ought to refer the matter to the public priests? But if you did not think it desirable to consult the whole college of priests, was there no single one of them who seemed to you a suitable man (of those who are eminent among all the citizens for age and honour and authority) for you to communicate your intention about the dedication to him? The truth was, not that you despised, but that you were afraid of their dignity.
LII. Could you have dared to ask Publius Servilius or Marcus Lucullus, (men by the assistance of whose wisdom and authority I as consul snatched the republic out of your hands, out of your jaws,) with what words or with what ceremony you could consecrate the house of a citizen? (that is my first point;) and in the next place, of that citizen, to whom the chief