The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero
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and their own prepared centurions, and money, and bands of slaves; to aid you with their infamous assemblies, to deride the authority of the senate, to threaten the Roman knights with death and proscription, to terrify me with threats, to threaten me with contests and murder, to fill my house with their friends, which had heretofore been full of virtuous men; through fear of proscription, to deprive me of the crowds of good men who used to associate with me, to strip me of their protection; to forbid the senate, that most illustrious body, not only to fight for me, but even to implore men, and to entreat them in my behalf, and, changing their garments, to lament my danger,—was not even this violence?
XXII. Why then did I depart, or what fear was there? I will not say in me. Allow that I am timid by nature; what are we to say of so many thousands of the bravest men? what did our Roman knights think? what did the senate? what, in short, did all good men think? If there was no violence, why did they escort me out of the city with tears, instead of reproving and detaining me, or being indignant with me and leaving me? Or was I afraid that I could not, while present, resist their accusations if they proceeded against me according to the usages and principles of our ancestors? If a day had been appointed for my trial, must I have dreaded the investigation? or must I have feared a private bill being introduced against me without any trial? A trial in so shameful a cause! I suppose I am a man who, if the cause were not understood, could not speak so as to explain it at all,—or could I not make people approve of my cause, when its excellence is such that of its own merits it made people approve not only of itself while it was before them, but of me also though I was absent? Was the senate, were all ranks of the people, were those men who flew hither from all Italy to cooperate in my recal, likely to be more indifferent, while I was present, about retaining and preserving me, in that cause which even that parricide says was such, that he complains that I was sought out and recalled to my previous honours by the whole people? Was there then no danger to me whatever in a court of justice; but was I to fear a private bill, and that if a penalty were sought to be recovered from me while I was present, no one would interpose a veto? Was I so destitute of friends, or was the republic so entirely without magistrates? What? supposing the tribes had been convoked, would they have approved of a proscription, I will not say against me who had deserved so well of them by my efforts for their safety, but would they have approved of it in the case of any citizen whatever? Or, if I had been present, would those veteran troops of conspirators, and those profligate and needy soldiers of yours, and that new force of two most impious consuls, have spared my person, when, after that I had, by departing, succumbed to their inhumanity and wickedness, I could not though absent satisfy their hostility to me by my misfortunes?
XXIII. For what injury had my unhappy wife done to you? whom you harassed and plundered and illtreated with every description of cruelty. What harm had my daughter done to you? whose incessant weeping and mourning and misery were so agreeable to you, though they moved the eyes and feelings of every one else. What had my little son done? whom no one ever saw all the time that I was away, that he was not weeping and lamenting; what, I say, had he done that you should so often try to murder him by stratagem? What had my brother done? who, when, some time after my departure, he arrived from his province, and thought that it was not worth his while to live unless I were restored to him, when his grief and excessive and unprecedented mourning seemed to render him an object of pity to every one, was constantly attacked by you with arms and violence, and escaped with difficulty out of your hands. But why need I dilate upon your cruelty, which you have displayed towards me and mine? when you have waged a horrible and nefarious war, dyed with every description of hatred, against my walls, my roofs, my pillars and door-posts. For I do not think that you, when, after my departure, you in the covetousness of your hopes had devoured the fortunes of all the rich men, the produce of all the provinces, the property of tetrarchs and of kings, were blinded by the desire of my plate and furniture. I do not think that that Campanian consul with his dancing colleague, after you had sacrificed to the one all Achaia, Thessaly, Bœotia, Greece, Macedonia, and all the countries of the barbarians, and the property of the Roman citizens in those countries, and when you had delivered up to the other Syria, Babylon, and the Persians, those hitherto uninjured and peaceful nations, to plunder; I do not think, I say, that they were covetous of my thresholds and pillars and folding-doors. Nor, indeed, did the bands and forces of Catiline think that they could appease their hunger with the tiles and mortar of my roofs. But as, without being influenced by the idea of booty, still out of hatred we are accustomed to destroy the cities of enemies;—not of all enemies indeed, but of those with whom we have waged any bitter and intestine war; because when our minds have been inflamed against any people by reason of their cruelty, there always appears to be some war still lingering in their abodes and habitations, * * *
XXIV. No law had been passed respecting me. I had not been ordered to appear in court; I had not been summoned. I was absent. I was even in your own opinion a citizen with all my rights as such unimpaired, when my house on the Palatine Hill, and my villa in the district of Tusculum, were transferred one a-piece to each of the consuls; decrees of the senate were flying about; marble columns from my house were carried off to the father-in-law of the consul in the sight of the Roman people; and the consul who was my neighbour at my villa had not only my stock and the decorations of my villa, but even my trees transferred to his farm; while the villa itself was utterly destroyed, not from a desire of plunder, (for what plunder could there be there?) but out of hatred and cruelty. My house on the Palatine Hill was burnt, not by accident, but having been set on fire on purpose. The consuls were feasting and revelling amid the congratulations of the conspirators, while the one boasted that he had been the favourite of Catiline, and the other that he was the cousin of Cethegus. This violence, O priests, this wickedness, this frenzy, I, opposing my single person to the storm, warded off from the necks of all good men, and I received on my body all the attacks of disaffection, all the long-collected violence of the wicked, which, having been long coming to a head, with silent and repressed hatred, was at last breaking out now that it had got such audacious leaders. Against me alone were directed the consular firebrands hurled from the hands of the tribunes; all the impious arrows of the conspiracy, which I had once before blunted, now stuck in me. But if, as was the advice of many most gallant men, I had determined to contend with violence and arms against violence, I should either have gained the day with a great slaughter of wicked men, who notwithstanding were citizens, or else all the good men would have been slain, to the great joy of the wicked, and I too should have perished together with the republic. I saw, that if the senate and people of Rome existed, I should have a speedy return with the greatest dignity; and I did not think it possible that such a state of affairs should long continue to exist, as for me not to be allowed to live in that republic which I myself had saved. And if I were not allowed to live there, I had heard and read that some of the most illustrious men of our country had rushed into the middle of the enemy to manifest death for the sake of the safety of their army. And could I doubt that if I were to sacrifice myself for the safety of the entire republic, I should in this point be better off than the Decii, because they could not even hear of their glory, while I should be able to be even a spectator of my own renown?
XXV. Therefore your frenzy, being disconcerted, kept making vain attacks. For the bitterness of my fortune had exhausted all the violence of all the wicked citizens. In such terrible disaster and such wide-spread ruin, there was no room for any new cruelty. Cato was next to me. Was there nothing which you could do, beyond making him who had been my leader and guide in all my conduct, a partner also in my misfortune? What? Could you banish him? No. What then? You could send him away for the money of Cyprus. One booty may have been lost; another will be sure to be found; only let this man be got out of the way. Accordingly, the hated Marcus Cato is commissioned to go to Cyprus, as if it was a kindness that was being conferred on him. Two men are removed, whom the wicked men could not bear the sight of; one by the most discreditable sort of honour, the other by the most honourable possible calamity. And that you may be aware that that man had been an enemy not to their persons, but to their virtues, after I was driven out, and Cato despatched on his commission, he turns himself against that very man by whose advice and by whose assistance he was in the habit of saying in the assemblies that he had done and continued to do what he was then doing and everything which he had hitherto done. He thought that Cnæus Pompeius, who he saw was in every one’s opinion by far the first man in the city, would not much longer tolerate his frenzy. After he had filched out of his custody by treachery the son of a king who