The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero
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country, was a very annoying thing to those men who were at that time the governors of the republic, but still that annoyance had a certain sort of dignity in it.
XX. But as for this man, about whom I am now saying so much, O ye immortal gods! what is he? what is his influence? what is there about him to give so great a city, if it does fall, (may the gods avert the omen!) the comfort of at least seeming to have been overthrown by a man? a fellow who, from the moment of his father’s death, made his tender age subservient to the lusts of wealthy buffoons; when he had satiated their licentiousness, then he turned to the domestic seduction of his own sister; then, when he had become a man, he devoted himself to the concerns of a province, and to military affairs, and suffered insults from the pirates; he satisfied the lusts even of Cilicians and barbarians; afterwards, having in a most wicked manner tampered with the army of Lucius Lucullus, he fled from thence, and at Rome, the moment of his arrival there, he began to compound with his own relations not to prosecute them, and received money from Catiline to prevaricate in the most shameless manner. From thence he went into Gaul with Murena; in which province he forged wills of dead people, murdered wards, and made bargains and partnerships of wickedness with many. When he returned from Gaul, he appropriated to himself all that most fruitful and abundant source of gain which is derived from the Campus Martius, in such a manner that he (a man wholly devoted to the people!) cheated the people in a most scandalous manner, and also (merciful man that he is!) put the canvassers of the different tribes to death at his own house in the most cruel manner. Then came his quæstorship, so fatal to the republic, to our sacrifices, to our religious observances, to your authority, and to the public courts of justice; in which he insulted gods and men, virtue, modesty, the authority of the senate, every right both human and divine, and the laws and the tribunals of the country. And this was his first step; this (alas for the miserable times and for our senseless discords!) was the first step of Publius Clodius towards the conduct of the affairs of the republic; this was the path by which he first began to approach and mount up to his present boast of being a friend of the people. For the unpopularity arising from the treaty at Numantia, at the making of which he had been present as quæstor to Caius Mancinus the consul, and the severity displayed by the senate in repudiating that treaty, were a constant source of grief and fear to Tiberius Gracchus; and that circumstance alienated him, a brave and illustrious man, from the wisdom of the senators. And Caius Gracchus was excited by the death of his brother, by affection for him, by indignation, and by the greatness of his own mind, to seek to exact vengeance for the slaughter of a member of his family. We know that Saturninus was led to confess himself a friend of the people out of indignation, because at a time of great dearness of provisions, the senate removed him while he was quæstor from the superintendence of the corn market, which belonged to him by virtue of his office, and appointed Marcus Scaurus to manage that business. And it was the breeze of popularity which carried Sulpicius further than he intended, after he had set out in a good cause, and had resisted Caius Julius when seeking to obtain the consulship contrary to the laws.
XXI. All these men had a reason,—not an adequate one, indeed, (for no one can have an adequate reason for proving a bad citizen to the republic,) but still they had a serious reason, and one connected with some indignation of mind not unbecoming to a man. Publius Clodius came out as a popular character from saffron gowns, and turbans, and woman’s slippers, and purple bands, and stomachers, and singing, and iniquity, and adultery. If the women had not caught him in this dress, if he had not been allowed to escape by the indulgence of the maid servants, from a place which it was impious for him to enter, the Roman people would have lost their devoted friend, the republic would have been deprived of so energetic a citizen. It is in consequence of this insane conduct, amid our dissensions, for which we are by these recent prodigies admonished by the immortal gods, that one of the patricians has been taken from their number to be made a tribune of the people, in direct violation of the laws. That which, the year before, his brother Metellus and the senate, which even then was unanimous, had refused, and in the most rigorous manner rejected with one voice and one mind, Cnæus Pompeius being the first to declare his opinion; (so greatly, after the dissensions of the nobles of which we are now reminded, were circumstances disturbed and altered;) that which his brother when consul opposed being done,—which his kinsman and companion, a most illustrious man, who had refused to speak in his favour when he was accused, had utterly prevented,—was now effected for him, owing to the dissensions of the nobles, by that man as consul, who, of all others, was bound to be his greatest enemy; and he said that he had done it by the advice of that man whose authority no one could repent having followed. A most shameful and grievous firebrand was thrown into the republic. Your authority was aimed at; and the dignity of the most honourable orders in the city, and the unanimity of all virtuous men, and in short, the entire constitution of the state. For these things were certainly attacked when that flame kindled at that time was directed against me, who had been the principal investigator of these matters. I bore the brunt of the attack, and I alone suffered on behalf of my country; but still I bore it so that you, while you were surrounded by the same flames, saw me wounded first, and burning, as it were, in your defence.
XXII. The dissensions were not appeased; but the unpopularity of those men, by whom we thought that our cause was espoused, even increased. So, after a time, the very same men being the movers, and Pompeius the chief man, who roused Italy willing to be roused, and the Roman people which regretted me, and you who demanded me back, to take measures for my safety, employing not only his authority but even his prayers, I was restored. Let there be an end of discord, let us at last find rest from our long dissensions. No, that pest will not allow it; he summons these assemblies, he throws everything into confusion and disorder, selling himself sometimes to one party, sometimes to another; and yet not in such a manner that any one thinks himself the more praiseworthy for being praised by him; though at the same time they are glad that those whom they do not like, are abused by him. And I do not marvel at this fellow; for what else can he do? I do marvel at those wise and respectable men; in the first place, that they so easily allow any illustrious man who has deserved well of the republic to be attacked by the voice of a most profligate man; in the second place, that they think, (it would be a most disastrous thing for themselves if the fact were so,) that the real glory and dignity of any one can be impaired by the abuse of an abandoned and worthless man; and lastly, that they do not see, what, however, they do seem to me to have some suspicion of, that those frantic and desultory attacks of his may some day or other be turned against themselves. And it is owing to this undue alienation of some persons from others that those arrows now stick in the republic which, as long as they stuck in me alone, I bore,—with pain, indeed, but still not as thinking them of any great importance. Could that fellow, if he had not first given himself up to those men whose minds he thought were alienated from your authority,—if he had not, admirable authority that he is! extolled them to the skies with his panegyric,—if he had not threatened that he would let loose the army of Caius Cæsar, (though in that he spoke falsely, but no one contradicted him,) that he would, I say, set on that army with hostile standards against the senate-house,—if he had not cried out that he was doing what he was by the assistance of Cnæus Pompeius, and at the instigation of Marcus Crassus,—if he had not declared (the only word of truth that he spoke) that the consuls had united their cause with him;—could he, I say, ever have been so cruel an enemy to me or so wicked a disturber of the republic?
XXIII. After that, when he saw you recovering your breath after your fear of bloodshed, when he saw your authority rising again above the waves of that slavery, and the recollection of and regret for me getting more vivid, then he began on a sudden to sell himself to you, though with the most treacherous design. Then he began to say, both here in this house and in the assemblies of the people, that the Julian laws had been passed in opposition to the auspices; among which laws was that lex curiata on which the whole of his tribuneship depended, though he was too frantic to see that. He brought forward that most fearless man Marcus Bibulus. He asked him whether he had not always been observing the heavens when Caius Cæsar was carrying those laws? He replied, that he always had been observing them at that time. He asked the augurs whether laws which had been passed under these circumstances had been duly passed? They said, such a proceeding was irregular. Some people, virtuous men, and men who had done great service to me, began to extol him; utterly ignorant, I imagine, of the lengths to which his madness could carry him. He proceeded further. He begar to inveigh against Cnæus Pompeius, the originator,