The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero
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marvel then is it, if he, urged on by the insanity of fear and drawn on headlong by wickedness, was neither able properly to perform the ceremonies which he had begun, nor to utter one single word in due order with proper solemnity?
LVI. And as this is the case, O priests, recal now your attention from this subtle argument of ours to the general state and interests of the republic, which you have before now had many gallant men to assist you in supporting, but which in this cause you are upholding on your own shoulders alone. To you the whole future authority of the senate, which you yourselves always led in a most admirable manner during the discussion of my case; to you that most glorious agitation of Italy, and that thronging hither of all the municipal towns; to you the Campus Martius, and the unanimous voice of all the centuries, of which you were the chiefs and leaders; to you every company in the city, every rank of men, all men who have any property or any hopes, think that all their zeal for my dignity, all their decisions in my favour, are not only entrusted, but put wholly under your protection. Lastly, the immortal gods themselves, who protect this city and empire, appear to me to have claimed the credit of my return, and of the happiness which it has diffused, as due to the power and judicial sentence of their priests, in order to make it evident to all nations and to all posterity that I had been restored to the republic by divine agency. For this return of mine, O priests, and this restoration, consists in recovering my house, my possessions, my altars, my hearths, and my household gods. And if that fellow with his most wicked hands tears up their dwellings and abodes, and, with the consuls for his leaders, as if the city were taken, has thought it becoming to destroy this house alone, as if it were the house of its most active defender, still those household gods, those deities of my family, will be by you replaced in my house at the same time as myself.
LVII. Wherefore, O I pray and entreat thee, O thou great God of the Capitol, thee whom the Roman people hath styled, on account of thy kindnesses to us, All Good, and, on account of thy might, All Powerful; and thee, O royal Juno; and thee, O guardian of the city, O Minerva, thee who hast at all times been my assistant in my counsels, and the witness of my exertions; and ye too, ye who above all others have claimed me back and recalled me, ye, for the sake of whose habitations most especially it is that I am engaged in this contest, O ye household gods of my fathers, and of my family; and ye too, who preside over this city and this republic, ye do I entreat, ye from whose spires and temples I once repelled that fatal and impious flame; thee too do I supplicate, O Vesta, whose chaste priestesses I have defended from the rage and frenzy and wickedness of men, whose renowned and eternal fire I would not suffer either to be extinguished in the blood of the citizens, or to be confused with the conflagration of the whole city; I entreat you all, that,—if at that almost fatal crisis of the republic I exposed my life, in defence of your ceremonies and temples, to the rage and arms of abandoned citizens; and if, at a subsequent time, when the destruction of all good men was aimed at through my ruin, I invoked your aid, I recommended myself and my family to your protection, I devoted myself and my life, on condition that if, both at that moment, and previously, and in my consulship, disregarding all my own advantage, all my own interests, and all reward for my exertions, I strove with all my anxiety and thoughts and vigilance for nothing but the safety of my fellow-citizens, I might be allowed some day or other to enjoy my country restored to me; but if my counsels had been of no service to my country, then, that I might endure everlasting misery, separated from all my friends;—I may be allowed to think this devotion of my life accepted and approved by the gods, when I am by your favour restored to my home. For at present, O priests, I am not only deprived of my house, which you are at present inquiring into, but of the whole city, to which I appear to be restored. In the most frequented and finest part of the city, look to that (I will not say monument, but) wound of the country. And as you must see that that sight is to me one which is more to be detested and avoided than death itself, do not, I entreat you, allow that man by whose return you have thought that the republic too would be restored, to be deprived not only of the ornaments suited to his dignity, but even of his part in the city.
LVIII. I am not moved by the plundering of my property, nor by the razing of my houses, nor by the devastation of my farms, nor by the booty most cruelly taken by the consuls out of my possessions. I have always considered these as perishable and fleeting gifts of fortune and of the times, and not as proofs of virtue or genius; and they are things, too, of which I have never thought it becoming to wish for plenty and abundance, so much as for moderation in enjoying them, and patience if deprived of them. In truth, the moderate amount of my family property very nearly corresponds to my necessities; and I shall leave a sufficiently ample patrimony to my children in the name and memory of their father. But I cannot without great discredit to the republic, and great shame and misery to myself, continue deprived of my house, which has been taken from me by wickedness, and, under pretence of religion, built up again with even more impiety than it was pulled down.
Wherefore, if you consider that my return is pleasing and acceptable to the immortal gods, to the senate, to the Roman people, to all Italy, to the provinces, to foreign nations, and to yourselves, who have always taken the lead in and exercised a principal influence over all measures connected with my safety, I beg and entreat you, O priests, now, since it is the will of the senate that you should do so, to place me, whom you have restored by your authority and zeal and votes to my country, with your own hands in my house.
THE SPEECH OF M. T. CICERO RESPECTING THE ANSWERS OF THE SOOTHSAYERS. ADDRESSED TO THE SENATE.
THE ARGUMENT.
This speech was spoken towards the close of the year after the last speech, but it follows it in nearly all editions, as it relates in some degree to the same subject. In the early part of the summer many prodigies were reported to have happened in the neighbourhood of Rome. And the senate consulted the soothsayers as to the cause of them, and as to the means of averting their consequences. The soothsayers made answer, that the solemn shows and plays had been negligently exhibited; that sacred places had been treated as profane; that ambassadors had been illtreated and slain; that good faith and oaths had been disregarded, and ancient and secret sacrifices neglected and profaned. That these prodigies had been sent as warnings by the gods, lest the Romans should bring evil on themselves and on their country by continuing their disorderly conduct and dissensions. That therefore the evils must be amended, or removed as far as possible, and supplications made to Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and the other gods.
After this answer had been received, Clodius, who was now ædile, called the people together, and made them a speech to prove that the evils which had especially offended the gods were the tyrannical conduct of Cicero, and the restoration of his house, after it had been consecrated to the service of religion. Cicero replied to this harangue the next day in the senate, arguing that all the offences which could have excited the displeasure of the gods were much more fairly imputable to Clodius than to him; and after exculpating himself, and dwelling on the outrages of which Clodius had notoriously been guilty, he exhorted all citizens of all classes to lay aside their mutual animosities, as the only way of regaining the favour of the gods and their former prosperity.
I. Yesterday, O conscript fathers, when I was greatly moved by the thoughts of your dignity, and of the great attendance of the Roman knights to whom a senate was given, I thought myself bound to check the shameless impudence of Publius Clodius, when he was hindering the cause of the publicans from being proceeded with by the most foolish possible questions, and was studying to save Publius Tullio the Syrian, and was, even before your eyes, selling himself to him, to whom, indeed, he had already been entirely sold. Therefore I checked the man in his frenzy and exultation, the very moment that I gave him a hint of the danger of a public trial; and by two half-uttered words, I bridled all the violence and ferocity of that gladiator.
But he, ignorant what sort of men the consuls were, pale and fuming with rage, burst on a sudden out of the senatehouse, with some broken and empty threats, and with those denunciations with which he used to terrify us in the time of Piso and Gabinius. And when I began to press upon him, as he was departing, I received the greatest reward of my exertions by all of you rising up at the same time with me, and by all the publicans thronging round me to escort me. But that senseless man stopped on a sudden out of countenance, colourless, and voiceless; then he looked back; and, as soon as he beheld Cnæus