Against Vatinius
In Vatinium
Headnote
Cicero against P. Vatinius, delivered at Rome in early March 56 BC. The piece is not a free-standing oration but the record of a cross-examination (interrogatio) of a hostile witness, conducted in the course of the Pro Sestio trial: Vatinius had appeared as one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution against Sestius, and Cicero, after delivering the Pro Sestio, took him in hand. The form shows in every paragraph: nearly every section opens with quaero or volo audire de te “I ask of you,” “I want to hear from you,” and the body is a rolling catalogue of incriminating questions. The text we have has a manuscript lacuna at the close of §4 (the serpent-from-the-hole simile breaks off mid-clause); §5 resumes mid-sentence on the C. Cornelius defence of 65 BC.
Vatinius is the great political bogey of Cicero’s middle years: tribune of the plebs in 59 BC, the chief instrument of Caesar’s consular legislation (the lex Vatinia gave Caesar his five-year command in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum), and one of the principal architects of the assault on the consul Bibulus. Cicero takes him point by point through that tribunate — §§14–29 are essentially a single sustained indictment — and through a few private scandals besides. The opening (§§1–10) sets the contemptuous frame: Vatinius is not worth refuting as a witness, only worth harrying; the parallel between the two men — Cicero recalled by the consensus of the city, Vatinius hated by it — closes with the demand that Vatinius answer which of the two it was better for the state should have been born a citizen.
The body of the cross-examination is structured around the three pillars of legal-religious order that Vatinius’s tribunate trampled: the auspices (§§14–17, 20), the lex Aelia et Fufia restraining tribunician legislation (§§18, 23), and the authority of the Senate (§§35–36, on the legation Vatinius arranged for himself by his own bill). Around these are arranged the charges of personal violence (§§21–23, the leading of Bibulus to prison and the siege of his house), the Vettius affair (§§24–26, the suborned informer placed on the rostra to mark out for proscription a Senate-bound catalogue — Bibulus, Lucullus, Curio, Domitius, Lentulus the Flamen Martialis, L. Paulus — and then strangled in the Tullianum to silence the bribery), the alternate-rejection law sprung against C. Antonius (§§27–28, with the parallel praise of Q. Maximus), the swift wealth from treaties with cities, kings, and tetrarchs in a single year (§29), the funereal toga at Q. Arrius’s epulum in the temple of Castor (§§30–32 — a set-piece on the public feast turned into a deathly thing), and the Memmius prosecution under the lex Licinia Junia (§§33–34, the unheard-of appeal to a tribune — Clodius by name — and the storming of the praetor’s tribunal in the Forum).
The closing run (§§37–41) turns on Vatinius’s candidacy for the praetorship of 55 BC. Cicero’s own lex Tullia de ambitu (the canvassing law of 63 BC) explicitly forbids gladiatorial games in the two years before standing, and Vatinius is giving them; Caesar at Aquileia is reported as saying that “Vatinius in his tribunate did nothing for free; a man who has placed everything in money ought to bear the lack of office with equanimity” (§38). The peroration (§39) catalogues the public loathing — relations, fellow tribesmen, neighbours, kinsmen, even the scrofulas “migrated from your foul face” — and asks why he should prefer the praetorship to death. §§40–41 return to the Sestius trial: the inconsistency of praising T. Annius (Milo) here while having given false testimony against him elsewhere; and the closing trap — Vatinius had argued in his own testimony that Sestius should not have been arraigned for vis at all, and yet has just testified against him on that very charge.
The interrogation was a hostile triumph: Sestius was acquitted unanimously on 11 March 56 BC (Q. fr. 2.4 §1). It was also, in the longer arc, a tactical mistake. Caesar took the offence personally: when Cicero in 56–54 BC moved (under the post-Luca compact) to defend the men he had attacked, the most conspicuous of those rapprochements was with Vatinius himself. Cicero would defend Vatinius for de repetundis in 54 BC — the speech does not survive, but the letters report it (Att. 4.16, Q. fr. 2.16) — and would correspond with him cordially in the late forties (Fam. 5.9–11a, from Vatinius governor of Illyricum, are amiable and even warm). The In Vatinium stands, then, as the high-water mark of the brief optimate-Pompeian-Sestian front of late 57 – early 56 BC, just before Luca: the moment when Cicero, riding the unanimous Sestius acquittal, could afford to flay one of Caesar’s own creatures in open court. It is also a small classroom in the rhetorical interrogation: the sustained quaero, volo audire, fecerisne, dixerine — the verb forms of cross-examination accumulated into a sustained prosecution-by-question.
Cross-examination of P. Vatinius as a witness. If, Vatinius, I had been willing to look only at what indignity demanded, I would have done what was strongly the pleasure of these gentlemen: dismissed you in silence — you whose testimony, on account of the foulness of your life and the squalor of your household, is reckoned of no weight. For none of these men thought you ought either to be refuted as a serious adversary or questioned as a scrupulous witness. But a little while ago I was perhaps less restrained than I should have been; for, in the hatred of you — in which, although on account of your crime against me I ought to surpass everyone, I am yet outdone by almost everyone — I was so stirred up that, although I despised you no less than I hated you, I nevertheless wished to send you off harassed rather than disregarded.
IN P. VATINIVM TESTEM INTERROGATIO si tantum modo, Vatini, quid indignitas postularet spectare voluissem, fecissem id quod his vehementer placebat, ut te, cuius testimonium propter turpitudinem vitae sordisque domesticas nullius momenti putaretur, tacitus dimitterem; nemo enim horum aut ita te refutandum ut gravem adversarium aut ita rogandum ut religiosum testem arbitrabatur. sed fui paulo ante intemperantior fortasse quam debui; odio enim tui, in quo etsi omnis propter tuum in me scelus superare debeo, tamen ab omnibus paene vincor, sic sum incitatus ut, cum te non minus contemnerem quam odissem, tamen vexatum potius quam despectum vellem dimittere.
And so, lest you wonder that this honour is being paid you by me — that I question one whom no one judges worthy of meeting, of approach, of the vote, of citizenship, of the daylight — no cause would have driven me to it but this: to crush that ferocity of yours, to break your audacity, and to slow that loquacity of yours, snared by a few questions of mine. Indeed, Vatinius, even if you had come under suspicion with P. Sestius falsely, you should still have pardoned me, if in the great peril of a man who has deserved best of me I had been willing to comply both with his moment and with his wish.
qua re ne tibi hunc honorem a me haberi forte mirere, quod interrogem quem nemo congressu, nemo aditu, nemo suffragio, nemo civitate, nemo luce dignum putet, nulla me causa impulisset nisi ut ferocitatem istam tuam comprimerem et audaciam frangerem et loquacitatem paucis meis interrogationibus inretitam retardarem. etenim debuisti, Vatini, etiam si falso venisses in suspicionem P. Sestio, tamen mihi ignoscere, si in tanto hominis de me optime meriti periculo et tempori eius et voluntati parere voluissem.
But that yesterday, while giving testimony, you lied — when you affirmed that you had had absolutely no conversation with Albinovanus, not only about prosecuting Sestius, but on any subject whatsoever — you yourself a moment ago unwittingly disclosed: when you said both that T. Claudius had taken counsel with you and had sought your advice for prosecuting P. Sestius, and that Albinovanus, whom you had previously said was scarcely known to you, had come to your house and spoken much with you, and lastly that the written texts of P. Sestius’s contio speeches — which Albinovanus neither knew nor could find — you had given to him, and that they had been recited at this trial. In all of which, on the one count you confessed, that the prosecutors were drilled and suborned by you; on the other you refuted your own inconsistency, tangled with both fickleness and even perjury — when you said that the man you had said was utterly estranged from you had been at your house, and that to a man whom from the beginning you had judged to be a sham-prosecutor you had given whatever books he had asked for in order to prosecute.
sed te hesterno die pro testimonio esse mentitum, cum adfirmares nullum tibi omnino cum Albinovano sermonem non modo de Sestio accusando, sed nulla umquam de re fuisse, paulo ante imprudens indicasti, qui et T. Claudium tecum communicasse et a te consilium P. Sesti accusandi petisse, et Albinovanum, quem antea vix tibi notum esse dixisses, domum tuam venisse, multa tecum locutum dixeris, denique contiones P. Sesti scriptas, quas neque nosset neque reperire posset, te Albinovano dedisse easque in hoc iudicio esse recitatas. in quo alterum es confessus, a te accusatores esse instructos et subornatos, in altero inconstantiam tuam cum levitate tum etiam periurio implicatam refellisti, cum, quem a te alienissimum esse dixisses, eum domi tuae fuisse, quem praevaricatorem esse ab initio iudicasses, ei te quos rogasset ad accusandum libros dixeris dedisse.
You are too vehement and ferocious by nature: you do not consider it lawful that any word should leave anyone’s mouth that does not strike pleasantly and honourably on your ears. You came in furious with all; which I, the moment I caught sight of you, before you began to speak — while Gellius, the wet-nurse of every seditious man, was previously giving his testimony — perceived and foresaw. For suddenly, like a serpent from its hole, with eyes bulging, neck inflated, throat swollen, you thrust yourself in, so that there was renewed for me that old assault of yours upon \
nimium es vehemens feroxque natura: non putas fas esse verbum ex ore exire cuiusquam quod non iucundum et honorificum ad auris tuas accidat. venisti iratus omnibus; quod ego, simul ac te aspexi, prius quam loqui coepisti, cum ante Gellius, nutricula seditiosorum omnium, testimonium diceret, sensi atque providi. repente enim te tamquam serpens e latibulis oculis eminentibus, inflato collo, tumidis cervicibus intulisti, ut mihi renovatus ille tuus in to
\ I defended my old friend, who was nevertheless an intimate of yours, since in this state assault, of the sort you yourself sometimes employ, is wont to be censured, but defence never. But I ask of you: why was I not to defend C. Cornelius? Did Cornelius carry any law against the auspices? Did he disregard the Aelian, the Fufian law? Did he bring violence to bear on a consul? Did he hold a temple with armed men? Did he throw down a vetoing colleague by force? Did he pollute the rites, drain the treasury, plunder the commonwealth? These are yours, yours all of them: against Cornelius nothing of the sort was charged. He was said to have read the codex; he defended himself, with his own colleagues as witnesses, that he had read it not for the sake of reciting but of verifying. It was settled, however, that Cornelius on that day had dismissed the assembly and obeyed the veto. But you, to whom Cornelius’s defence is displeasing — what case, what face will you bring before your own patrons? To them you are already prescribing how great a reproach it will be to them if they defend you, when you have judged Cornelius’s defence to be the sort of thing to be flung at me by way of slander.
veterem meum amicum, sed tamen tuum familiarem, defenderim, cum in hac civitate oppugnatio soleat qua tu nunc uteris non numquam, defensio numquam vituperari. sed quaero a te cur C. Cornelium non defenderem: num legem aliquam Cornelius contra auspicia tulerit, num Aeliam, num Fufiam legem neglexerit, num consuli vim attulerit, num armatis hominibus templum tenuerit, num intercessorem vi deiecerit, num religiones polluerit, aerarium exhauserit, rem publicam compilarit? tua sunt, tua sunt haec omnia: Cornelio eius modi nihil obiectum est. codicem legisse dicebatur: defendebat testibus conlegis suis non se recitandi causa legisse, sed recognoscendi. constabat tamen Cornelium concilium illo die dimisisse, intercessioni paruisse. tu vero, cui Corneli defensio displicet, quam causam ad patronos tuos aut quod os adferes? quibus iam praescribis quanto illis probro futurum sit si te defenderint, cum tu mihi Corneli defensionem in maledictis obiciendam putaris.
And yet, Vatinius, remember this: a little after that defence of mine which you say was displeasing to good men, I was made consul — with the highest goodwill of the entire Roman people and the singular zeal of every best citizen — in the most magnificent fashion within human memory; and that I attained, by living modestly, all those things which you said you so often hoped to attain by predicting them shamelessly. As for the fact that you reproached me with my withdrawal, and that you wished to renew the grief and groaning of these men — to whom that day was bitterest which to you was sweetest — this much only I answer you: when you and the other plagues of the commonwealth were seeking a pretext for arms, and were eager, through the use of my name, to plunder the fortunes of the rich, to drink down the blood of the leading men of the state, to glut your cruelty and the long-standing hatred which you had inveterately conceived against good men, I preferred to break your wickedness and madness by yielding rather than by resistance.
ac tamen hoc, Vatini, memento, paulo post istam defensionem meam, quam tu bonis viris displicuisse dicis, me cum universi populi Romani summa voluntate tum optimi cuiusque singulari studio magnificentissime post hominum memoriam consulem factum, omniaque ea me pudenter vivendo consecutum esse quae tu impudenter vaticinando sperare te saepe dixisti. nam quod mihi discessum obiecisti meum, et quod horum, quibus ille dies acerbissimus fuit qui idem tibi laetissimus, luctum et gemitum renovare voluisti, tantum tibi respondeo me, cum tu ceteraeque rei publicae pestes armorum causam quaereretis, et cum per meum nomen fortunas locupletium diripere, sanguinem principum civitatis exsorbere, crudelitatem vestram odiumque diuturnum quod in bonos iam inveteratum habebatis saturare cuperetis, scelus et furorem vestrum cedendo maluisse frangere quam resistendo.
Therefore I beg of you, Vatinius, that you pardon me, since I spared the country which I had saved; and, if I bear with you as the destroyer and harasser of the commonwealth, that you bear with me as its preserver and guardian. Then you reproach the withdrawal of a man whom you see was recalled by the longing of every citizen — by the very mourning of the commonwealth itself. But you said that men toiled for my recall not on my account but on the account of the commonwealth: as if any man of outstanding spirit who has entered upon public life would judge anything more to be wished for than that he be loved by his fellow citizens for the commonwealth’s sake!
qua re peto a te ut mihi ignoscas, Vatini, ei cum patriae pepercerim quam servaram, et, si ego te perditorem et vexatorem rei publicae fero, tu me conservatorem et custodem feras. deinde eius viri discessum increpas quem vides omnium civium desiderio, ipsius denique rei publicae luctu esse revocatum. at enim dixisti non mea sed rei publicae causa homines de meo reditu laborasse: quasi vero quisquam vir excellenti animo in rem publicam ingressus optabilius quicquam arbitretur quam se a suis civibus rei publicae causa diligi!
Surely my nature is harsh, my approach difficult, my face severe, my answers haughty, my way of life arrogant; surely no one missed my company, no one my humanity, no one my counsel, no one my help — by longing for which (to put it at the lowest) the Forum was sad, the Senate-house mute, every pursuit of the good arts at last fell silent. But let nothing have been done on my account: let us grant that all those decrees of the Senate, the bidding of the people, the resolutions of all Italy, of every guild and every association concerning me were made on the commonwealth’s account. What then, you who are most untaught of solid praise and true standing, could have happened to me more remarkable? What more to be wished for, towards the immortality of glory and the everlasting memory of my name, than that all my fellow citizens should judge this — that the safety of the state was bound up with the safety of one man, mine?
scilicet aspera mea natura, difficilis aditus, gravis vultus, superba responsa, insolens vita; nemo consuetudinem meam, nemo humanitatem, nemo consilium, nemo auxilium requirebat; cuius desiderio, ut haec minima dicam, forum maestum, muta curia, omnia denique bonarum artium studia siluerunt. sed nihil sit factum mea causa: omnia illa senatus consulta, populi iussa, Italiae totius, cunctarum societatum, conlegiorum omnium decreta de me rei publicae causa esse facta fateamur. quid ergo, homo imperitissime solidae laudis ac verae dignitatis, praestantius mihi potuit accidere? quid optabilius ad immortalitatem gloriae atque in memoriam mei nominis sempiternam, quam omnis hoc civis meos iudicare, civitatis salutem cum unius mea salute esse coniunctam?
And this thrust of yours I return to you. For as you said that I was dear to the Senate and the Roman people not so much on my own account as on the commonwealth’s, so I say of you — though you are most foul in every fierceness and savagery — that you are nevertheless hateful to the state not so much on your own account as on the commonwealth’s. And, that I may at long last come to you, let this be my last word about myself. What each of us says about himself is, in fact, not a thing to be much asked after; what good men say — that is what carries the greatest weight and moment.
quod quidem ego tibi reddo tuum; nam ut tu me carum esse dixisti senatui populoque Romano non tam mea causa quam rei publicae, sic ego te, quamquam es omni diritate atque immanitate taeterrimus, tamen dico esse odio civitati non tam tuo quam rei publicae nomine. atque ut aliquando ad te veniam, de me hoc sit extremum. quid quisque nostrum de se ipse loquatur, non est sane requirendum: boni viri quid dicant, id est maximi momenti et ponderis.
There are two times at which the judgements of our fellow citizens about us may be looked at — one of office, the other of safety. Office on such terms of goodwill from the Roman people has been conferred on few, and on me; safety with so great a zeal of the state has been restored to no one. But what men feel about you we have tested in the matter of office; in the matter of safety we await it. Even so, that I may compare you not with these leading men of the state who are present in support of P. Sestius, but with you yourself, a man not only of the most shameless sort but the foulest and the lowest — I ask of you, Vatinius, you most arrogant and to me most hostile man, which after all you think to have been better and more excellent for this state, this commonwealth, this city, these temples, the treasury, the Senate-house, these men whom you see, their goods, their fortunes, their children, the rest of the citizens, in a word for the shrines of the immortal gods, the auspices, the rites: that I be born a citizen in this state or you? When you have answered me this — either so shamelessly that men can scarcely keep their hands off you, or so painfully that those puffed-up parts of you at last burst — then answer also, with a memory ready, what I shall ask you about yourself.
duo sunt tempora quibus nostrorum civium spectentur iudicia de nobis, unum honoris, alterum salutis. honos tali populi Romani voluntate paucis est delatus ac mihi, salus tanto studio civitatis nemini reddita. de te autem homines quid sentiant in honore experti sumus, in salute exspectamus. sed tamen ne me cum his principibus civitatis qui adsunt P. Sestio, sed ut tecum, cum homine uno non solum impudentissimo sed etiam sordidissimo atque infimo, conferam, de te ipso, homine et adrogantissimo et mihi inimicissimo, quaero, Vatini, utrum tandem putes huic civitati, huic rei publicae, huic urbi, his templis, aerario, curiae, viris his quos vides, horum bonis fortunis liberis, civibus ceteris, denique deorum immortalium delubris auspiciis religionibus melius fuisse et praestabilius me civem in hac civitate nasci an te? Cum mihi hoc responderis, aut ita impudenter ut manus a te homines vix abstinere possint, aut ita dolenter ut aliquando ista quae sunt inflata rumpantur, tum memoriter respondeto ad ea quae te de te ipso rogaro.
And that most shadowy time of the entry of your youth I shall let lie hidden. You may, by my leave, have dug through walls in your adolescence with impunity, plundered your neighbours, beaten your mother: let your worthlessness have this prize — that the foulness of your youth be covered up by your own obscurity and squalor. You stood for the quaestorship along with P. Sestius; while this man said nothing except what he was actually doing, you said you were thinking of holding a second consulship. I ask of you: do you remember, when P. Sestius was made quaestor by every vote, that you barely, against everyone’s wish, not by the people’s favour but by the consul’s, clung on at the bottom of the list?
atque illud tenebricosissimum tempus ineuntis aetatis tuae patiar latere. licet impune per me parietes in adulescentia perfoderis, vicinos compilaris, matrem verberaris: habeat hoc praemi tua indignitas, ut adulescentiae turpitudo obscuritate et sordibus tuis obtegatur. quaesturam petisti cum P. Sestio, cum hic nihil loqueretur nisi quod agebat, tu de altero consulatu gerendo te diceres cogitare. quaero abs te teneasne memoria, cum P. Sestius quaestor sit cunctis suffragiis factus, tunc te vix, invitis omnibus, non populi beneficio sed consulis, extremum adhaesisse?
In that office, when, with a great outcry, the water-province had fallen to you by lot, were you not sent by me as consul to Puteoli, to prevent the exporting from there of gold and silver? In which business, when you supposed that you had been sent not as a guard to detain the goods but as a customs-officer to share them out, and when you were rifling the houses, the warehouses, the ships of all men most thievishly, and were entangling business-men in the most inequitable trials, terrifying merchants stepping off ship and delaying those embarking — do you remember that hands were laid on you at the assembly in Puteoli, that the complaints of the men of Puteoli were brought to me as consul? After your quaestorship, did you go out as legate to Further Spain under the proconsul C. Cosconius? When the journey into Spain is usually completed almost on foot, or, if a man wishes to sail, the route of sailing is fixed — did you come into Sardinia, and from there into Africa? Were you (a thing it was not lawful for you to do without a decree of the Senate) in the kingdom of Hiempsal, were you in the kingdom of Mastanesosus, did you come to the strait through Mauretania? Whom do you know to have ever, since the founding of the city, reached that province as legate to Spain by such routes as these?
in eo magistratu cum tibi magno clamore aquaria provincia sorte obtigisset, missusne sis a me consule Puteolos, ut inde aurum exportari argentumque prohiberes? in eo negotio cum te non custodem ad continendas, sed portitorem ad partiendas mercis missum putares, cumque omnium domos, apothecas, navis furacissime scrutarere, hominesque negoti gerentis iudiciis iniquissimis inretires, mercatores e navi egredientis terreres, conscendentis morarere, teneasne memoria tibi in conventu Puteolis manus esse adlatas, ad me consulem querelas Puteolanorum esse delatas? post quaesturam exierisne legatus in ulteriorem Hispaniam C. Cosconio pro consule? cum illud iter Hispaniense pedibus fere confici soleat, aut, si qui navigare velit, certa sit ratio navigandi, venerisne in Sardiniam atque inde in Africam? fuerisne, quod sine senatus consulto tibi facere non licuit, in regno Hiempsalis, fuerisne in regno Mastanesosi, venerisne ad fretum per Mauretaniam? quem scias umquam legatum Hispaniensem istis itineribus in illam provinciam pervenisse?
You were made tribune of the plebs — for why should I question you about your scandals in Spain and your foulest thefts? I ask of you first, in general: what kind of wickedness and crime did you leave undone in that magistracy? And here at the outset I prescribe to you not to mingle your squalor with the splendour of the most distinguished men. Whatever I shall ask you, I shall ask of yourself alone; nor shall I drag you out from the standing of any most ample man, but from your own darkness; and all my weapons will be so cast at you that no one, as you are wont to say, will be wounded through your flank: they will stick fast in your lungs and your innards.
factus es tribunus plebis—quid enim te de Hispaniensibus flagitiis tuis sordidissimisque furtis interrogem? quaero abs te primum universe quod genus improbitatis et sceleris in eo magistratu praetermiseris? ac tibi iam inde praescribo ne tuas sordis cum clarissimorum virorum splendore permisceas. ego te quaecumque rogabo de te ipso rogabo, neque te ex amplissimi viri dignitate, sed ex tuis tenebris extraham; omniaque mea tela sic in te conicientur ut nemo per tuum latus, quod soles dicere, saucietur; in tuis pulmonibus ac visceribus haerebunt.
And since the beginnings of all great things are drawn from the immortal gods, I want you to answer me, you who are accustomed to call yourself a Pythagorean, and to hold up the name of a most learned man as a screen for your savage and barbarous ways: what so great perversion of mind has held you, what so great madness, that, when you had taken upon yourself unheard-of and impious rites — when you are accustomed to call up the souls of the dead from below, when you are accustomed to slaughter the shades of the underworld with the entrails of boys — you have held in contempt the auspices on which this city was founded, on which the whole commonwealth and the empire are sustained, and at the beginning of your tribunate gave notice to the Senate that the responses of the augurs and the arrogance of that college would be no obstacle to your acts?
et quoniam omnium rerum magnarum ab dis immortalibus principia ducuntur, volo ut mihi respondeas tu, qui te Pythagoreum soles dicere et hominis doctissimi nomen tuis immanibus et barbaris moribus praetendere, quae te tanta pravitas mentis tenuerit, qui tantus furor ut, cum inaudita ac nefaria sacra susceperis, cum inferorum animas elicere, cum puerorum extis deos manis mactare soleas, auspicia quibus haec urbs condita est, quibus omnis res publica atque imperium tenetur, contempseris, initioque tribunatus tui senatui denuntiaris tuis actionibus augurum responsa atque eius conlegi adrogantiam impedimento non futura?
Next I ask: did you keep faith in that matter? Did anything ever cause you delay in summoning the assembly and bringing forward a law, because you knew that on that day watch had been kept of the heavens? And since this is the one place where you say you have something in common with Caesar, I shall part you from him — not only for the commonwealth’s sake but also for Caesar’s, lest some stain from your utter unworthiness seem to be spattered upon his standing. First I ask: are you, as Caesar does, committing your case to the Senate? Then, what authority belongs to a man who defends himself by another’s deed, not his own? Then — for at last the true voice will burst out of me, and I shall say without hesitation what I think — if even C. Caesar had been somewhat more violent in some matter, if the greatness of contention, his zeal for glory, his outstanding spirit, his excelling nobility had driven him in some direction, what in that great man would even at the time have been bearable, and would have been blotted out by the very greatest deeds he afterwards performed — that, gallows-bird, you will take to yourself, and the voice of Vatinius the brigand and sacrilegist will be heard demanding this: that the same be granted him as to Caesar?
secundum ea quaero servarisne in eo fidem? num quando tibi moram attulerit quo minus concilium advocares legemque ferres, quod eo die scires de caelo esse servatum? et quoniam hic locus est unus quem tibi cum Caesare communem esse dicas, seiungam te ab illo, non solum rei publicae causa verum etiam Caesaris, ne qua ex tua summa indignitate labes illius dignitati adspersa videatur. primum quaero num tu senatui causam tuam permittas, quod facit Caesar? deinde, quae sit auctoritas eius qui se alterius facto, non suo defendat? deinde,— erumpet enim aliquando ex me vera vox et dicam sine cunctatione quod sentio,—si iam violentior aliqua in re C. Caesar fuisset, si eum magnitudo contentionis, studium gloriae, praestans animus, excellens nobilitas aliquo impulisset, quod in illo viro et tum ferendum esset et maximis rebus quas postea gessit oblitterandum, id tu tibi, furcifer, sumes, et Vatini latronis ac sacrilegi vox audietur hoc postulantis, ut idem sibi concedatur quod Caesari?
For thus I question you. You were tribune of the plebs — separate yourself from the consul: you had nine brave colleagues. Of them three you knew were daily keeping watch of the heavens, whom you ridiculed, whom you said were private men. Of these you see two now sitting in the praetexta — you who sold the aedilician praetexta toga which you had had made up for nothing! — the third you know, a young man as he was, to have attained from that beleaguered and battered tribunate the standing of a consular. The remaining six there were: of whom some plainly thought with you, some held some middle course; they all had laws promulgated, and among them many were carried by my friend C. Cosconius, our juror here — whom you nearly burst at the sight of in aedilician office — carried, and on my motion too.
sic enim ex te quaero. tribunus plebis fuisti,—seiunge te a consule: conlegas habuisti viros fortis novem. ex iis tres erant quos tu cotidie sciebas servare de caelo, quos inridebas, quos privatos esse dicebas; de quibus duos praetextatos sedentis vides,—te aediliciam praetextam togam, quam frustra confeceras, vendidisse!—tertium scis ex illo obsesso atque adflicto tribunatu consularem auctoritatem hominem esse adulescentem consecutum. reliqui sex fuerunt, e quibus partim plane tecum sentiebant, partim medium quendam cursum tenebant: omnes habuerunt leges promulgatas, in iis multas meus necessarius, etiam de mea sententia, C. Cosconius, iudex noster, quem tu dirumperis cum aedilicium vides.
I want you to answer me: did any one out of the whole college dare to bring forward a law except you alone? What audacity in you was so great, what so great a force, that what your nine colleagues judged ought to be feared by them, you alone — emerged from the mire, easily of all men in all things the lowest — judged ought to be despised, looked down upon, mocked? Do you know any tribune of the plebs, from the founding of the city, to have transacted business with the plebs when it was settled that watch had been kept of the heavens?
volo uti mihi respondeas num quis ex toto conlegio legem sit ausus ferre praeter unum te? quae tanta in te fuerit audacia, quae tanta vis ut, quod novem tui conlegae sibi timendum esse duxerint, id unus tu emersus e caeno, omnium facile omnibus rebus infimus contemnendum, despiciendum, inridendum putares? num quem post urbem conditam scias tribunum plebis egisse cum plebe, cum constaret servatum esse de caelo.
At the same time I want you to answer this also: when, with you as tribune of the plebs, the Aelian and Fufian laws still stood in the commonwealth — laws that often weakened and held in check the madnesses of tribunes, against which laws no one before you ever attempted to act — which laws indeed in the year following, with two men sitting in the temple (not consuls, but betrayers and plagues of this state), were burned up together with the auspices, with the vetoes, with all public right: did you ever hesitate to transact with the plebs against those laws, and to convoke the assembly? Of all the tribunes of the plebs, however seditious, have you heard of any so audacious that he ever called an assembly contrary to the Aelian or the Fufian law?
simul etiam illud volo uti respondeas, cum te tribuno plebis esset etiam tum in re publica lex Aelia et Fufia, quae leges saepe numero tribunicios furores debilitarunt et represserunt, quas contra praeter te nemo umquam est facere conatus,—quae quidem leges anno post, sedentibus in templo duobus non consulibus sed proditoribus huius civitatis ac pestibus, una cum auspiciis, cum intercessionibus, cum omni iure publico conflagraverunt: ecquando dubitaris contra eas leges cum plebe agere et concilium convocare? num quem ex omnibus tribunis plebis, quicumque seditiosi fuerunt, tam audacem audieris fuisse ut umquam contra legem Aeliam aut Fufiam concilium advocaret?
I ask this also of you: did you attempt, did you desire, finally did you even contemplate — for the thing is of such a kind that, if it has only come into your mind, no one would judge you unworthy of any torment — did you contemplate, in that intolerable not-kingship of yours (for that name you long to hear) but brigandage, getting yourself made augur in the place of Q. Metellus, so that whoever caught sight of you would take up a doubled grief and groaning, both from longing for the most distinguished citizen and from the office held by the foulest and the most wicked man? Did you so judge the commonwealth, with you as tribune, not merely shaken loose, not merely the state thrown out of joint, but this city captured and overturned, that we could bear Vatinius an augur?
quaero illud etiam ex te, conatusne sis, voluerisne, denique cogitaris,—est enim res eius modi ut, si tibi in mentem modo venit, nemo sit qui te ullo cruciatu esse indignum putet,—cogitarisne in illo tuo intolerabili non regno,—nam cupis id audire,—sed latrocinio augur fieri in Q. Metelli locum, ut, quicumque te aspexisset, duplicem dolorem gemitumque susciperet et ex desiderio clarissimi civis et ex honore turpissimi atque improbissimi? adeone non labefactatam rem publicam te tribuno neque conquassatam civitatem, sed captam hanc urbem atque perversam putaris ut augurem Vatinium ferre possemus?
At this point I ask: if you had been made augur — the thing you had coveted, in the very contemplation of which we who hated you could scarcely endure our grief, while those to whom you were a darling could scarcely hold back their laughter — if to the rest of the wounds by which you thought the commonwealth was being destroyed you had inflicted this mortal blow too of your augurate — were you going to decree, the thing all augurs from Romulus down have decreed, that with Jupiter flashing lightning it is impious to transact business with the people? Or, because you had always so transacted, were you, augur as you were, about to dissolve the auspices?
hoc loco quaero, si, id quod concupieras, augur factus esses,—in qua tua cogitatione nos qui te oderamus vix dolorem ferebamus, illi autem quibus eras in deliciis vix risum tenebant: sed quaero, si ad cetera vulnera, quibus rem publicam putasti deleri, hanc quoque mortiferam plagam inflixisses auguratus tui, utrum decreturus fueris, id quod augures omnes usque ab Romulo decreverunt, Iove fulgente cum populo agi nefas esse, an, quia tu semper sic egisses, auspicia fueris augur dissoluturus?
And not to speak any longer about your augurate — which I do unwillingly, because it sets me to remembering the ruins of the commonwealth; for never, while not only the majesty of these men but even the city itself was standing, did you imagine you would be augur — but, to leave your dreams and come to your crimes, I want you to answer me: when M. Bibulus the consul — I shall not call him a man thinking well of the commonwealth, lest you, a powerful fellow, take offence at me, who quarrelled with him, but a man certainly advancing nowhere, attempting nothing in the commonwealth, only in mind dissenting from your acts — when you were leading him as consul off into chains, and from the Tabula Valeria your colleagues were ordering him to be set free, did you, with the tribunals run together into a continuous platform, make a bridge before the rostra, by which the most temperate and most steadfast consul of the Roman people, with rescue removed, with friends shut out, with the violence of ruined men whipped on, was being led, in a foulest and most miserable spectacle, not to prison, but to punishment, to death?
ac ne diutius loquar de auguratu tuo,—quod invitus facio ut recorder ruinas rei publicae; neque enim tu umquam stante non modo maiestate horum, sed etiam urbe te augurem fore putasti: verum tamen ut somnia tua relinquam, ad scelera veniam, volo uti mihi respondeas, cum M. Bibulum consulem non dicam bene de re publica sentientem, ne tu mihi homo potens irascare, qui ab eo dissensisti, sed hominem certe nusquam progredientem, nihil in re publica molientem, tantum animo ab actionibus tuis dissentientem,—cum eum tu consulem in vincula duceres et ab tabula Valeria conlegae tui mitti iuberent, fecerisne ante rostra pontem continuatis tribunalibus, per quem consul populi Romani moderatissimus et constantissimus, sublato auxilio, exclusis amicis, vi perditorum hominum incitata, turpissimo miserrimoque spectaculo non in carcerem, sed ad supplicium et ad necem duceretur?
I ask: was anyone before you so wicked as to do this, so that we may know whether you are an imitator of old crimes or an inventor of new ones? And, the same you — when, with these counsels and crimes of this sort in the name of C. Caesar (a most clement and most excellent man, but by your own wickedness and audacity), you had driven M. Bibulus out of the Forum, the Senate-house, the temples, all public places, and were keeping him shut up at home, and when, not by the majesty of his command, not by the right of the laws, but by the guard of his door and the watch of his walls the life of the consul was sheltered — did you send a beadle to drag M. Bibulus from his house by force, so that, what has always been preserved among private men, that no one’s house can be his exile, that should not, with you as tribune of the plebs, hold for a consul?
quaero num quis ante te tam fuerit nefarius qui id fecerit, ut sciamus utrum veterum facinorum sis imitator an inventor novorum; idemque tu cum his atque huius modi consiliis ac facinoribus nomine C. Caesaris, clementissimi atque optimi viri, scelere vero atque audacia tua, M. Bibulum foro, curia, templis, locis publicis omnibus expulisses, inclusum domi contineres, cumque non maiestate imperi, non iure legum, sed ianuae praesidio et parietum custodiis consulis vita tegeretur, miserisne viatorem qui M. Bibulum domo vi extraheret, ut, quod in privatis semper est servatum, id te tribuno plebis consuli domus exsilium esse non posset?
At the same time answer me this — you who call us, who agree on the common safety, tyrants — were you not, not a tribune of the plebs, but some intolerable tyrant out of the mire and out of the darkness, who first attempted to overturn the very commonwealth which had been founded by the discovery of the auspices, by the abolition of those same auspices; then who alone trampled underfoot and reckoned as nothing those most sacred laws — I mean the Aelian and Fufian — which lived through the ferocity of the Gracchi, the audacity of Saturninus, the swill of Drusus, the contention of Sulpicius, the gore of Cinna, even amid the arms of Sulla; who exposed a consul to death, besieged him shut up at home, tried to drag him out from under his own roof; who in that magistracy not only emerged from beggary but now even strikes us with terror at the thought of his wealth?
simulque mihi respondeto tu, qui nos qui de communi salute consentimus tyrannos vocas, fuerisne non tribunus plebis, sed intolerandus ex caeno nescio qui atque ex tenebris tyrannus, qui primum eam rem publicam quae auspiciis inventis constituta est isdem auspiciis sublatis conarere pervertere, deinde sanctissimas leges, Aeliam et Fufiam dico, quae in Gracchorum ferocitate et in audacia Saturnini et in conluvione Drusi et in contentione Sulpici et in cruore Cinnano, etiam inter Sullana arma vixerunt, solus conculcaris ac pro nihilo putaris, qui consulem morti obieceris, inclusum obsederis, extrahere ex suis tectis conatus sis, qui in eo magistratu non modo emerseris ex mendicitate, sed etiam divitiis nos iam tuis terreas?
Were you of such cruelty as to attempt by your bill to lift up and destroy chosen men and the leading men of the state, when L. Vettius — who had confessed in the Senate that he had been carrying a weapon, that he had wanted with his own hands to offer death to Cn. Pompeius, the highest and most illustrious of citizens — you brought before the contio, set the informer on the rostra, in that augurated temple and place, I say, in which other tribunes of the plebs, for the sake of seeking authority, are accustomed to bring forward the leading men of the state? There you wished the informer Vettius to lend his tongue and his voice to your wickedness and your madness. Did L. Vettius, at your contio, asked by you, say that he had had as authors and instigators and partners of that crime those men whose removal from the state — which you at that time were attempting — would have left the state unable to stand? M. Bibulus, with whose confinement you were not content, you had wanted to kill, you had stripped of his consulship, you were longing to deprive of his country; L. Lucullus, whose achievements — because you yourself, evidently from boyhood, had had your eye on the praises of imperators — you envied the more vehemently; C. Curio, the perpetual enemy of all the wicked, the author of public counsel, the freest of men in defending the common liberty, together with his son, leading man of the youth, even more closely bound up with the commonwealth than ought to have been required of that age — these you wished to destroy;
fuerisne tanta crudelitate ut delectos viros et principes civitatis tollere et delere tua rogatione conareris, cum L. Vettium, qui in senatu confessus esset se cum telo fuisse, mortem Cn. Pompeio, summo et clarissimo civi, suis manibus offerre voluisse, in contionem produxeris, indicem in rostris, in illo, inquam, augurato templo ac loco conlocaris, quo auctoritatis exquirendae causa ceteri tribuni plebis principes civitatis producere consuerunt? ibi tu indicem Vettium linguam et vocem suam sceleri et dementiae tuae praebere voluisti. dixeritne L. Vettius in contione tua rogatus a te sese auctores et impulsores et socios habuisse sceleris illius eos viros, quibus e civitate sublatis, quod tu eo tempore moliebare, civitas stare non posset? M. Bibulum, cuius inclusione contentus non eras, interficere volueras, spoliaras consulatu, patria privare cupiebas; L. Lucullum, cuius tu rebus gestis, quod ipse ad imperatorias laudes a puero videlicet spectaras, vehementius invidebas, C. Curionem, perpetuum hostem improborum omnium, auctorem publici consili in libertate communi tuenda maxime liberum, cum filio principe iuventutis cum re publica coniunctiore etiam quam ab illa aetate postulandum fuit, delere voluisti;
L. Domitius, whose dignity and splendour was, I suppose, dazzling Vatinius’s eyes — whom for the common hatred of the good men you hated, but for the future, on account of all the hope that there is and was concerning him, you had for some while been afraid of; L. Lentulus, this our juror, the Flamen Martialis, because at that time he was the rival of your Gabinius — by the information of the same Vettius you wished to crush him: who, if he had then conquered that plague and ruin (which by your wickedness was not allowed him), the commonwealth would not have been conquered. His son too, by the same information and the same charge, you wished to add to his father’s destruction; L. Paulus, who at that time as quaestor was holding Macedonia — what a citizen, what a man! who by the laws had banished from the country two impious betrayers, enemies in the household, a man born for preserving the commonwealth — you herded into the same information of Vettius and into the same number with these.
L. Domitium, cuius dignitas et splendor praestringebat, credo, oculos Vatini,—quem tu propter commune odium in bonos oderas, in posterum autem, propter omnium spem quae de illo est atque erat, ante aliquanto timebas, L. Lentulum, hunc iudicem nostrum, flaminem Martialem, quod erat eo tempore Gabini tui competitor, eiusdem Vetti indicio opprimere voluisti: qui si tum illam labem pestemque vicisset, quod ei tuo scelere non licuit, res publica victa non esset. huius etiam filium eodem indicio et crimine ad patris interitum adgregare voluisti: L. Paulum, qui tum quaestor Macedoniam obtinebat, quem civem, quem virum! qui duo nefarios patriae proditores, domesticos hostis, legibus exterminarat, hominem ad conservandam rem publicam natum, in idem Vetti indicium atque in eundem hunc numerum congregasti.
What then am I to complain of for myself? — I who actually owe you thanks for not having thought I ought to be cut off from the number of the bravest citizens. But what was that great madness of yours: that, when Vettius had already finished his speech at your bidding and had marked out the lights of the state and had stepped down from the rostra, you suddenly recalled him, conferred with him in the sight of the Roman people, and then asked him whether he could name any others? Did you not press him to name C. Piso, my son-in-law, who — in the greatest abundance of the best young men, with their equal continence, virtue, piety — has left no peer; and likewise M. Laterensis, a man who day and night ponders the praise and the commonwealth? Did you not, you most foul enemy, promulgate an inquiry against so many most ample men of such standing, with the informer’s reward for Vettius, with the most lavish prizes? When all these things had been rejected by all mortals, not by their will but by their outcry, did you not break the very Vettius’s neck in prison, that there might survive no informer’s record from a bribed informer, and an inquiry into that same crime might not be demanded against yourself?
quid ergo de me querar? qui etiam gratias tibi agere debeo quod me ex fortissimorum civium numero seiungendum non putasti. sed qui fuit tuus ille tantus furor ut, cum iam Vettius ad arbitrium tuum perorasset et civitatis lumina notasset descendissetque de rostris, eum repente revocares, conloquerere populo Romano vidente, deinde interrogares ecquosnam alios posset nominare? inculcarisne ut C. Pisonem, generum meum, nominaret, qui in summa copia optimorum adulescentium pari continentia, virtute, pietate reliquit neminem, itemque M. Laterensem, hominem dies atque noctes de laude et de re publica cogitantem? promulgarisne, impurissime hostis, quaestionem de tot amplissimis et talibus viris, indicium Vettio, praemia amplissima? quibus rebus omnium mortalium non voluntate sed convicio repudiatis, fregerisne in carcere cervices ipsi illi Vettio, ne quod indicium corrupti indici exstaret eiusque sceleris in te ipsum quaestio flagitaretur?
And since you frequently invoke the law you carried about alternate rejections of jurors — that all may understand you could not do even a right thing without crime — I ask: when, an equitable law having been promulgated at the start of your magistracy, you had already by then carried many others, did you wait until C. Antonius should have been brought to trial before Cn. Lentulus Clodianus and, after he had been brought to trial, then straightway pass against him — a man made defendant after your law — so that a consular, shut out, miserable, in the puncture of a moment, was stripped of the benefit and the equity of your own law?
et quoniam crebro usurpas legem te de alternis consiliis reiciendis tulisse, ut omnes intellegant te ne recte quidem facere sine scelere potuisse, quaero, cum lex esset aequa promulgata initio magistratus, multas iam alias tulisses, exspectarisne dum C. Antonius reus fieret apud Cn. Lentulum Clodianum, et, postea quam ille est reus factus, statim tuleris in eum qui tuam post legem reus factus esset, ut homo consularis exclusus miser puncto temporis spoliaretur beneficio et aequitate legis tuae?
You will say you had a familiarity with Q. Maximus. A splendid defence of your crime! For Maximus’s highest praise is this very thing: that, with the enmity taken up, the case undertaken, the questor and the bench chosen, he was unwilling to give to his enemy a more advantageous arrangement of rejections. Maximus did nothing foreign either to his own virtue or to those most distinguished men, the Pauli, the Maximi, the Africani, whose glory we not only hope to be renewed in his virtue, but already see renewed: your fraud, your evil-doing, your crime is this, that you put off to a moment of cruelty what you had promulgated under the name of mercy. And now C. Antonius consoles his misery only by this one thing, that he has chosen to hear, rather than to see, the images of his father and his brother and his brother’s daughter placed not in the family hall but in the prison.
dices familiaritatem tibi fuisse cum Q. Maximo. praeclara defensio facinoris tui! nam maximi quidem summa laus est sumptis inimicitiis, suscepta causa, quaesitore consilioque delecto, commodiorem inimico suo condicionem reiectionis dare noluisse. nihil maximus fecit alienum aut sua virtute aut illis viris clarissimis, Paulis, maximis, Africanis, quorum gloriam huius virtute renovatam non modo speramus, verum etiam iam videmus; tua fraus, tuum maleficium, tuum scelus illud est, te id quod promulgasses misericordiae nomine ad crudelitatis tempus distulisse. ac nunc quidem C. Antonius hac una re miseriam suam consolatur, quod imagines patris et fratris sui fratrisque filiam non in familia sed in carcere conlocatam audire maluit quam videre.
And since you despise the moneys of others, and boast most intolerantly of your own riches, I want you to answer me: did you, while tribune of the plebs, make treaties with cities, with kings, with tetrarchs? did you allocate sums from the treasury by your laws? did you snatch shares, then dearest of all, partly from Caesar and partly from the publicans? Since these things are so, I ask of you: have you not become rich, from a most poor man, in that very year in which the most stringent law about extortion was passed — so that all might understand that, by you, not only our acts (we whom you call tyrants), but even your closest friend’s own law has been treated with contempt? before whom you are even accustomed to bring charges against us, who are his closest friends, when you yourself, every time you say you are his connection, abuse him most contumeliously.
et quoniam pecunias aliorum despicis, de tuis divitiis intolerantissime gloriaris, volo uti mihi respondeas, fecerisne foedera tribunus plebis cum civitatibus, cum regibus, cum tetrarchis; erogarisne pecunias ex aerario tuis legibus; eripuerisne partis illo tempore carissimas partim a Caesare, partim a publicanis? quae cum ita sint, quaero ex te sisne ex pauperrimo dives factus illo ipso anno quo lex lata est de pecuniis repetundis acerrima, ut omnes intellegere possent a te non modo nostra acta, quos tyrannos vocas, sed etiam amicissimi tui legem esse contemptam; apud quem tu etiam nos criminari soles, qui illi sumus amicissimi, cum tu ei contumeliosissime totiens male dicas quotiens te illi adfinem esse dicis.
And this also I desire to learn from you: with what counsel or with what intent did you do it that at the public feast of my friend Q. Arrius you reclined in a black toga? Whom did you ever see do so, whom did you ever hear of? By what precedent, by what custom did you do it? You will say that you did not approve those thanksgivings. Splendid: let there have been no thanksgivings. Do you see that I am asking nothing of you about the case of that year, nothing about what may seem common to you with the highest men, but only about your own particular crimes? Let there have been no thanksgiving. Tell me, who ever dined in mourning? For that feast is funereal in this sense, that it is an offering belonging to the funeral, but the feast itself is of dignity.
atque etiam illud scire ex te cupio, quo consilio aut qua mente feceris ut in epulo Q. Arri, familiaris mei, cum toga pulla accumberes? quem umquam videris, quem audieris? quo exemplo, quo more feceris? dices supplicationes te illas non probasse. optime: nullae fuerint supplicationes. videsne me nihil de anni illius causa, nihil de eo quod tibi commune cum summis viris esse videatur, sed de tuis propriis sceleribus ex te quaerere? nulla supplicatio fuerit. cedo quis umquam cenarit atratus? ita enim illud epulum est funebre ut munus sit funeris, epulae quidem ipsae dignitatis.
But I leave aside the public feast of the Roman people, the festal day with its silver, its dress, all its display and ornament worth seeing. Who ever, in a private mourning, who ever at a family funeral, dined in a black toga? To whom, when he was coming out from the baths, was a black toga ever brought, except to you? When so many thousand men were reclining at table, when the master of the feast Q. Arrius himself was robed in white, you, with C. Fibulus in black and the rest of your furies, brought a funereal thing into the temple of Castor. Who at that moment did not groan, who did not grieve at the disaster of the commonwealth? What other talk was there at that feast but this — that this state, so great and so weighty, was thrown beneath, not your madness only, but even your mockery?
sed omitto epulum populi Romani, festum diem argento, veste, omni apparatu ornatuque visendo: quis umquam in luctu domestico, quis in funere familiari cenavit cum toga pulla? cui de balineis exeunti praeter te toga pulla umquam data est? Cum tot hominum milia accumberent, cum ipse epuli dominus, Q. Arrius, albatus esset, tu in templum Castoris te cum C. Fibulo atrato ceterisque tuis furiis funestum intulisti. quis tum non ingemuit, quis non doluit rei publicae casum? qui sermo alius in illo epulo fuit nisi hanc tantam et tam gravem civitatem subiectam esse non modo furori, verum etiam inrisioni tuae?
Were you ignorant of this custom? Had you never seen a public feast? Had you never as a boy or a young man been among cooks? Had you not, a little before, glutted that old hunger of yours at the most magnificent feast of the most noble young man Faustus? Whom had you seen recline there in black? The master of the house and his friends in black togas before the dinner? What so great derangement held you, that, unless you had done what was not lawful, unless you had violated the temple of Castor, the name of the feast, the eyes of the citizens, the ancient custom, the authority of the man who had invited you, you thought it too feebly attested that you held those thanksgivings to be nothing?
hunc tu morem ignorabas? numquam epulum videras? numquam puer aut adulescens inter cocos fueras? Fausti, adulescentis nobilissimi, paulo ante ex epulo magnificentissimo famem illam veterem tuam non expleras? quem accumbere atratum videras? dominum cum toga pulla et eius amicos ante convivium? quae tanta te tenuit amentia ut, nisi id fecisses quod fas non fuit, nisi violasses templum Castoris, nomen epuli, oculos civium, morem veterem, eius qui te invitarat auctoritatem, parum putares testificatum esse supplicationes te illas non putare?
I ask you this also, about something you committed as a private man — in which indeed you will now no longer be allowed to say that your case is bound up with that of the most distinguished men: were you not arraigned under the Licinian and Junian law? did not C. Memmius the praetor decree, by that law, that you appear on the thirtieth day? When that day came, did you not do what in this commonwealth not only had never been done before, but is, in all memory, altogether unheard-of? did you not appeal to the tribunes of the plebs, in order not to plead your case — I have spoken too lightly: that very thing would have been both novel and not to be borne — did you not appeal by name to the plague of that year, the fury of the country, the storm of the commonwealth, Clodius? Who, nevertheless, when by right, by custom, by his power he could not block the trial, returned to that violence and madness of his and offered himself as leader to your soldiers. In which matter, lest you suppose anything to have been said by me against you rather than asked of you, I shall lay on myself no burden of testimony: what in a short time I see I shall have to say from this same place, I save up; and I shall not arraign you, but, as in the other matters, I shall ask.
quaero etiam illud ex te, quod privatus admisisti, in quo certe iam tibi dicere non licebit cum clarissimis viris causam tuam esse coniunctam, postulatusne sis lege Licinia et Iunia? edixeritne C. Memmius praetor ex ea lege ut adesses die tricensimo? cum is dies venisset, fecerisne quod in hac re publica non modo factum antea numquam est, sed in omni memoria est omnino inauditum? appellarisne tribunos plebis ne causam diceres—levius dixi; quamquam id ipsum esset et novum et non ferendum—sed appellarisne nominatim pestem illius anni, furiam patriae, tempestatem rei publicae, Clodium. qui tamen cum iure, cum more, cum potestate iudicium impedire non posset, rediit ad illam vim et furorem suum, ducemque se militibus tuis praebuit. in quo ne quid a me dictum in te potius putes quam abs te esse quaesitum, nullum onus imponam mihi testimoni: quae mihi brevi tempore ex eodem isto loco video esse dicenda servabo, teque non arguam, sed, ut in ceteris rebus feci, rogabo.
I ask you, Vatinius: did anyone in this state, since the founding of the city, appeal to tribunes of the plebs that he might not plead his case? Did any defendant ever mount the tribunal of his own questor and throw him down by force, scatter the benches, hurl down the urns, and finally commit, in the disturbance of the trial, all those things on whose account the trials had been instituted? Do you know that at that time Memmius fled, that your prosecutors were torn out of your hands and your men’s, that the presidents of the inquisitions were driven from the next-door tribunals, that in the Forum, in the daylight, with the Roman people looking on, the inquisition, the magistrates, the custom of the ancestors, the laws, the jurors, the defendant, the penalty were swept away? Do you know that all this, by the diligence of C. Memmius, has been entered and attested in the public records? This also I ask: when, after you had been arraigned, you had returned from your legation — so that no one should suppose you were dodging the courts — and when, with the choice between the two open to you, you kept saying that you preferred to plead, what consistency was there, when you had been unwilling to use the refuge of the legation, in your having fled, by a most shameless appeal, to wicked rescue?
quaero ex te, Vatini, num quis in hac civitate post urbem conditam tribunos plebis appellarit ne causam diceret? num quis reus in tribunal sui quaesitoris escenderit eumque vi deturbarit, subsellia dissiparit, urnas deiecerit, eas denique omnis res in iudicio disturbando commiserit, quarum rerum causa iudicia sunt constituta? sciasne tum fugisse Memmium, accusatores esse tuos de tuis tuorumque manibus ereptos, iudices quaestionum de proximis tribunalibus esse depulsos, in foro, luce, inspectante populo Romano quaestionem, magistratus, morem maiorum, leges, iudices, reum, poenam esse sublatam? haec omnia sciasne diligentia C. Memmi publicis tabulis esse notata atque testata? atque illud etiam quaero, cum, postea quam es postulatus, ex legatione redieris,—ne quis te iudicia defugere arbitretur,— teque, cum tibi utrum velles liceret, dictitaris causam dicere maluisse, qui consentaneum fuerit, cum legationis perfugio uti noluisses, appellatione improbissima te ad auxilium nefarium confugisse?
And since mention has been made of your legation, I want to hear from you: by what decree of the Senate, after all, you became legate. From your gesture I understand what you answer: by your own law, you say. Are you then the very surest parricide of the country? Were you setting your eye on this — that the senators should be utterly swept out of the commonwealth? Did you not even leave to the Senate this, which no one ever took away — that legates be sent by the authority of that order? Did the public council seem to you so squalid, the Senate so beaten down, the commonwealth so wretched and prostrate, that it could no longer choose, after the custom of the ancestors, messengers of peace and war, spokesmen, interpreters, advisers in war-counsel, ministers of provincial service?
et quoniam legationis tuae facta mentio est, volo audire de te quo tandem senatus consulto legatus sis. de gestu intellego quid respondeas: tua lege, dicis. esne igitur patriae certissimus parricida? spectarasne id, ut patres conscripti ex re publica funditus tollerentur? ne hoc quidem senatui relinquebas, quod nemo umquam ademit, ut legati ex eius ordinis auctoritate legarentur? adeone tibi sordidum consilium publicum visum est, adeo adflictus senatus, adeo misera et prostrata res publica ut non nuntios pacis ac belli, non oratores, non interpretes, non bellici consili auctores, non ministros muneris provincialis senatus more maiorum deligere posset?
You had stripped from the Senate the power of decreeing provinces, the judgement of choosing the imperator, the disposing of the treasury — powers which the Roman people never sought for itself, the people that has never tried to wrest from the Senate the steering of the highest counsel. Granted: some part of this has been done in others’ cases: rarely, but it has happened, that the people has chosen an imperator. But who has ever heard of legates appointed without a decree of the Senate? Before you, no one; after you, immediately Clodius did the same with two prodigies of the commonwealth; for which you ought to be visited with an even greater evil, because you wounded the commonwealth not only by your own deed but by your example — nor are you yourself wicked alone, you wished also to teach others. For all these reasons do you know that you have been marked by the judgement of the most severe of men — the Sabines, of the bravest of men — the Marsi and the Paeligni, your fellow tribesmen; and that, since the founding of Rome, no one besides you, a fellow tribesman, has lost the tribe Sergia?
eripueras senatui provinciae decernendae potestatem, imperatoris deligendi iudicium, aerari dispensationem: quae numquam sibi populus Romanus appetivit, qui numquam senatui summi consili gubernationem auferre conatus est. age, factum est horum aliquid in aliis: raro, sed tamen factum est ut populus deligeret imperatorem: quis legatos umquam audivit sine senatus consulto? ante te nemo, post continuo fecit idem in duobus prodigiis rei publicae Clodius; quo etiam maiore es malo mactandus, quod non solum facto tuo sed etiam exemplo rem publicam vulnerasti, neque tantum ipse es improbus sed etiam alios docere voluisti. ob hasce omnis res sciasne te severissimorum hominum Sabinorum, fortissimorum virorum Marsorum et Paelignorum, tribulium tuorum, iudicio notatum, nec post Romam conditam praeter te tribulem quemquam tribum Sergiam perdidisse?
And this also I desire to hear from you: why is it, when I have brought forward a law on canvassing by decree of the Senate, brought it without violence, brought it with the auspices safe, brought it with the Aelian and Fufian laws safe, that you reckon it not a law — particularly when I obey your laws, however they were brought? When my law plainly forbids that, in the two years in which a man stands for or is about to stand for office, he should give gladiators except by a will, on the appointed day — what so great madness is in you, that in your very candidacy you dare to give gladiators? Do you suppose any tribune of the plebs can be found like that most certain gladiator of yours, who shall throw himself in the way to keep you from being made defendant under my law?
atque illud etiam audire de te cupio, qua re, cum ego legem de ambitu tulerim ex senatus consulto, tulerim sine vi, tulerim salvis auspiciis, tulerim salva lege Aelia et Fufia, tu eam esse legem non putes, praesertim cum ego legibus tuis, quoquo modo latae sunt, paream; cum mea lex dilucide vetet biennio qvo qvis petat petitvrvsve sit gladiatores dare nisi ex testamento praestitvta die, quae tanta in te sit amentia ut in ipsa petitione gladiatores audeas dare? num quem putes illius tui certissimi gladiatoris similem tribunum plebis posse reperiri qui se interponat quo minus reus mea lege fias?
And if you scorn and look down on all this, because you have persuaded yourself, as you keep saying openly, that, with gods and men unwilling, you, by some incredible love of C. Caesar towards you, will obtain whatever you wish — have you not heard, has no one told you, that C. Caesar said the other day at Aquileia, when mention had been made of certain men, that he was bearing very ill C. Alfius’s having been passed over, since he had recognized in the man the highest faith and probity; that he bore heavily, too, that some praetor had been made who had dissented from his interests; then that someone asked: how was he taking it about Vatinius? — and that he replied: Vatinius in his tribunate had done nothing for free; the man who had placed everything in money ought to bear the lack of office with equanimity?
ac si haec omnia contemnis ac despicis, quod ita tibi persuaseris, ut palam dictitas, te dis hominibusque invitis amore in te incredibili quodam C. Caesaris omnia quae velis consecuturum, ecquid audieris, ecquisnam tibi dixerit C. Caesarem nuper Aquileiae, cum de quibusdam esset mentio facta, dixisse C. Alfium praeteritum permoleste tulisse, quod in homine summam fidem probitatemque cognosset, graviterque etiam se ferre praetorem aliquem esse factum qui a suis rationibus dissensisset; tum quaesisse quendam, de Vatinio quem ad modum ferret; illum respondisse Vatinium in tribunatu gratis nihil fecisse; qui omnia in pecunia posuisset honore animo aequo carere debere.
But if even he himself — who, for the sake of increasing his own standing, has easily endured your being thrown headlong (at your own peril, by no fault of his own) — yet judges you most unworthy of every honour; if your neighbours, your kinsmen, your fellow tribesmen so hate you that they have reckoned your defeat as their own triumph; if no one looks at you without groaning, no one mentions you without cursing, if they shun you, flee from you, do not want to hear of you, and, when they have seen you, ward you off as a bad omen; if your relations spit you out, your fellow tribesmen curse you, your neighbours fear you, your kinsmen blush, if even the scrofulas have at last migrated from your foul face and have settled themselves in other places of you; if you are the public hatred of the people, of the Senate, of all country folk together — what reason is there that you should desire the praetorship rather than death, especially when you want to be a man of the people, and there is nothing you can do more agreeable to the people than this?
quod si ipse, qui te suae dignitatis augendae causa, periculo tuo, nullo suo delicto, ferri praecipitem est facile passus, tamen te omni honore indignissimum iudicat, si te vicini, si adfines, si tribules ita oderunt ut repulsam tuam triumphum suum duxerint, si nemo aspicit quin ingemescat, nemo mentionem facit quin exsecretur, si vitant, fugiunt, audire de te nolunt, cum viderunt, tamquam auspicium malum detestantur, si cognati respuunt, tribules exsecrantur, vicini metuunt, adfines erubescunt, strumae denique ab ore improbo demigrarunt et aliis iam se locis conlocarunt, si es odium publicum populi, senatus, universorum hominum rusticanorum,—quid est quam ob rem praeturam potius exoptes quam mortem, praesertim cum popularem te velis esse neque ulla re populo gratius facere possis?
But that we may at last hear how copiously you reply to my questions, I shall now close my interrogation, and at the very end ask you a few things about the case itself. I ask: what so great vanity, what so great fickleness was in you, that in this trial you praised T. Annius in those same words in which good men and good citizens are wont to praise him, when, not long ago, before the same most foul fury, brought out to the people, you most eagerly gave false testimony against him? Or will this be your prerogative and power, that when you have caught sight of the Clodian gangs and the band of criminal and ruined men, you will say, what you said at the contio, that Milo had besieged the commonwealth with gladiators and beast-fighters; but when you have come before such men as these, you will not dare to disparage a citizen of singular virtue, faith, steadfastness?
sed ut aliquando audiamus quam copiose mihi ad rogata respondeas, concludam iam interrogationem meam teque in extremo pauca de ipsa causa rogabo. quaero quae tanta in te vanitas, tanta levitas fuerit ut in hoc iudicio T. Annium isdem verbis laudares quibus eum verbis laudare et boni viri et boni cives consuerunt, cum in eundem nuper ab eadem illa taeterrima furia productus ad populum cupidissime falsum testimonium dixeris? an erit haec optio et potestas tua, ut, cum Clodianas operas et facinerosorum hominum et perditorum manum videris, Milonem dicas, id quod in contione dixisti, gladiatoribus et bestiariis obsedisse rem publicam: cum autem ad talis viros veneris, non audeas civem singulari virtute, fide, constantia vituperare?
But since you praise T. Annius so greatly, and spatter some little stain upon a most distinguished man by your praise — for in the number of those whom you disparage T. Annius would rather be — yet still I ask: when, in the administration of the commonwealth, there has been between T. Annius and P. Sestius a partnership of all counsels — a thing declared not only by the judgement of the good but also by the judgement of the wicked; for each is on trial for the same case and for the same charge, the one on a day appointed by the very man whom you yourself sometimes confess to be the only man more wicked than yourself, the other by your own counsels, with him however helping — I ask: how can you separate by your testimony those whom you join in your charge? This is the last thing I want you to answer me: when you were saying many things against Albinovanus on the score of collusive prosecution, did you not say that it had not pleased you, that it had not been right, for Sestius to be made a defendant on the charge of violence? that he ought rather to have been prosecuted under any other law, on any other charge? Did you not also say that the case of Milo, of that bravest of men, is judged to be linked with this case? That what was done for me by Sestius is welcome to good men? I do not press the inconsistency of your speech and your testimony — for the acts of this man which you say are approved by the good men, against those very acts you have testified in the most copious words; but the man with whose case and peril you are linking him, you have lifted up with the highest praises: but this I ask — do you think P. Sestius, under the law you say he ought not to have been prosecuted under at all, ought to be condemned? Or, if you do not wish to be consulted as a witness, that no authority may seem granted you by me, did you not give testimony on the charge of violence against the man whom you say ought not to have been made a defendant on the charge of violence at all?
sed cum T. Annium tanto opere laudes et clarissimo viro non nullam laudatione tua labeculam adspergas—in illorum enim numero mavult T. Annius esse qui a te vituperantur: verum tamen quaero, cum in re publica administranda T. Annio cum P. Sestio consiliorum omnium societas fuerit —id quod non solum bonorum, verum etiam improborum iudicio declaratum est; est enim reus uterque ob eandem causam et eodem crimine, alter die dicta ab eo quem tu unum improbiorem esse quam te non numquam soles confiteri, alter tuis consiliis, illo tamen adiuvante—quaero qui possis eos quos crimine coniungis testimonio diiungere? extremum illud est quod mihi abs te responderi velim, cum multa in Albinovanum de praevaricatione diceres, dixerisne nec tibi placuisse nec oportuisse Sestium de vi reum fieri? quavis lege, quovis crimine accusandum potius fuisse? etiam illud dixeris, causam Milonis, fortissimi viri, coniunctam cum hoc existimari? quae pro me a Sestio facta sint, bonis esse grata? non coarguo inconstantiam orationis ac testimoni tui—quas enim huius actiones probatas bonis esse dicis, in eas plurimis verbis testimonium dixisti; quicum autem eius causam periculumque coniungis, eum summis laudibus extulisti: sed hoc quaero, num P. Sestium, qua lege accusandum omnino fuisse negas, ea lege condemnari putes oportere? aut, si te in testimonio consuli noles, ne quid tibi auctoritatis a me tributum esse videatur, dixerisne in eum testimonium de vi quem negaris reum omnino de vi fieri debuisse?