Second Philippic
Philippica II
Headnote
Cicero’s most famous invective, and one of the masterpieces of Latin oratory. The Second Philippic was never spoken aloud. After the First Philippic of 2 September 44 BC, Antony withdrew to his villa at Tibur and on 19 September returned to the Senate with a prepared speech of seventeen days’ composition, savagely attacking Cicero (who, warned in time, did not attend). Cicero answered with this pamphlet, written through October at Puteoli, sent in draft to Atticus for criticism on 25 October (Ad Atticum 15.13a, 16.11), and circulated through trusted hands during November — but withheld from publication until after Antony’s break with the Senate later that winter. The fiction of the speech is that it is being delivered in the Senate on 19 September in immediate reply to Antony; the form (the consular replying to a violent attack, with all rhetorical resources unleashed) is modelled on Demosthenes’s On the Crown, to which Cicero refers ruefully in the letters of these weeks. The title Philippic, which Cicero himself had begun to use in half-jest, fixes the analogy.
The speech falls into two great movements. §1–41 are the defence, refuting Antony’s individual charges in order: the augural canvass and Brundisium “mercy” (1–10), the consulship and the suppression of Catiline (11–20), the Ides of March charge that Cicero counselled the killing (21–36) — which Cicero half-disclaims and half-embraces, in the great O praeclarum illud convivium of §32 (the “Trojan-horse” acceptance among the conspirators) and the stilus-as-stylus-and-dagger joke of §34 (“had that pen been mine that men say was, I should have finished not only the one act but the whole play”). §37–41 dispatch the camp-of-Pompey and legacies charges, with the brilliant Turselius joke. §42–58 are the counter-attack: the savage Curio episode and the toga muliebris/stola metaphor (44), the Alexandria-with-Gabinius episode (48), the seed-of-civil-war argument with the famous Helen-of-Troy comparison (Ut Helena Troianis, sic iste huic rei publicae belli causa, 55), and the lictors-and-mime tour of the Italian municipalities (57–58).
§59–118 are the indictment proper: Antony in the Caesarian war and after. §59–63 the Brundisium return and second Italian tour, ending in the famous Hippias-wedding vomiting scene (the master of horse filling his own lap and the whole tribunal frustis esculentis vinum redolentibus). §64–69 the purchase of Pompey’s property at the post-Pharsalia auction — the indignant O audaciam immanem! apostrophe, the Charybdis tam vorax cadence, the slaves’ beds spread with Pompey’s purple coverlets. §70–78 the master-of-horse year, the sham auction list, the comic Narbo-and-back midnight ride in Gallic slippers and a cloak with the lover’s letter for Fulvia. §79–84 the false-augury Dolabella set-piece — the augur announcing Alio die after the comitia had run their course. §85–87 the great Lupercalia scene: sedebat in rostris collega tuus amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus, and Antony offering the diadem to the lamentation of the people. §88–92 the aftermath of the Ides — Antony’s flight on 15 March, the funeral oration that loosed the mob, the magnificent abolition of the dictatorship — shadowed at once by the huckstering of immunities and citizenships from the records at the temple of Ops. §93–99 the forged Caesarian decrees (the Deiotarus syngrapha, the freeing of Crete from tribute, the exile-recalls), with the savage §99 attack on Antony’s treatment of his uncle Lucius Caesar and the sister who was Antony’s first wife. §100–108 the journey through Italy with mimes and gamblers on the Campanian and Leontine land, the desecration of Varro’s villa at Casinum, and the return to Rome with armed guards in the Forum. §109–112 demand to know on what religious grounds Antony, as Caesar’s flamen, neglects the praetexta on Caesar’s festival days, why armed Ituraeans are in the Forum, why the doors of Concord are not open. §113–118 are the great peroration: the example of the Liberators left for imitation, the Roman people’s young defenders, Antony’s wife and her tertia pensio, and the closing offer of Cicero’s own body — defendi rem publicam adulescens, non deseram senex; contempsi Catilinae gladios, non pertimescam tuos — sealed by the prayer ut moriens populum Romanum liberum relinquam.
The speech was prophetic. Within fifteen months, on 7 December 43 BC, Cicero was overtaken at his villa at Formiae by Antonian assassins and killed; his head and the hands that had written the Philippics were nailed to the Rostra in the Forum. Of the surviving works of Latin prose, none has more directly cost its author his life.
By what fate of mine, senators, am I to say it has come about that, these twenty years past, no man has been an enemy of the commonwealth without at the same time declaring war on me as well? Nor indeed is there any need for me to name them: you yourselves remember alongside me. They paid me penalties heavier than I should have wished for: but you, Antony, I marvel that you do not shudder at the ends of those whose deeds you imitate. And in others I marvelled at this less. For not one of them was an enemy to me of his own choice: every one of them had been provoked by me for the commonwealth’s sake. You, not so much as injured by a word, in order to seem more reckless than Catiline and more frenzied than Clodius, have unprovoked assailed me with insults, and have thought that your estrangement from me would be your recommendation to impious citizens.
quonam meo fato, patres conscripti, fieri dicam ut nemo his annis viginti rei publicae fuerit hostis qui non bellum eodem tempore mihi quoque indixerit? nec vero necesse est quemquam a me nominari: vobiscum ipsi recordamini. mihi poenarum illi plus quam optarem dederunt: te miror, Antoni, quorum facta imitere, eorum exitus non perhorrescere. atque hoc in aliis minus mirabar. nemo enim illorum inimicus mihi fuit voluntarius: omnes a me rei publicae causa lacessiti. tu ne verbo quidem violatus, ut audacior quam Catilina, furiosior quam Clodius viderere, ultro me maledictis lacessisti, tuamque a me alienationem commendationem tibi ad impios civis fore putavisti.
What am I to suppose? That he holds me in contempt? I do not see in my life, nor in my standing, nor in my conduct, nor in this modest measure of talent of mine, what Antony could find to look down upon. Or did he believe that I could most easily be torn down in the Senate? An order which has given to many of its most distinguished citizens the testimony of having well managed the commonwealth, but to me alone the testimony of having saved it? Or did he wish to contend with me in the trial of speaking? This indeed is a kindness. For what fuller, what richer subject than to speak both for me and against Antony? It must be this, surely: he did not think he could be approved by his own sort as an enemy of his country, unless he were also an enemy of mine.
quid putem? contemptumne me? non video nec in vita nec in gratia nec in rebus gestis nec in hac mea mediocritate ingeni quid despicere possit Antonius. an in senatu facillime de me detrahi posse credidit? qui ordo clarissimis civibus bene gestae rei publicae testimonium multis, mihi uni conservatae dedit. an decertare mecum voluit contentione dicendi? hoc quidem est beneficium. quid enim plenius, quid uberius quam mihi et pro me et contra Antonium dicere? illud profecto: non existimavit sui similibus probari posse se esse hostem patriae, nisi mihi esset inimicus.
Before I reply to his other points, on the friendship which he has charged me with breaking — a charge I judge to be of the gravest kind — I shall say a few words. He has complained that I once came into court against his interest. Was I not to come against a stranger on behalf of a familiar friend and connection? Was I not to come against influence gathered not on hope of virtue but by the bloom of youth? Was I not to come against an injury that this man secured by the favour of a most unjust officer, not by the right of a praetor? But this, I take it, you brought up to commend yourself to the lowest order, since all men remembered that you were the son-in-law of a freedman, and your children the grandsons of Quintus Fadius, a freedman. But you had handed yourself over, you said, to my school — for so you put it — you had been a frequent visitor at my house. By Hercules, if you had done so, you would have looked better to your reputation, better to your decency. But you did not do it; nor, even had you wished to, could you have done it on Gaius Curio’s terms.
cui prius quam de ceteris rebus respondeo, de amicitia quam a me violatam esse criminatus est, quod ego gravissimum crimen iudico, pauca dicam. contra rem suam me nescio quando venisse questus est. an ego non venirem contra alienum pro familiari et necessario, non venirem contra gratiam non virtutis spe, sed aetatis flore conlectam, non venirem contra iniuriam quam iste intercessoris iniquissimi beneficio obtinuit, non iure praetorio? sed hoc idcirco commemoratum a te puto ut te infimo ordini commendares, cum omnes te recordarentur libertini generum et liberos tuos nepotes Q. Fadi, libertini hominis, fuisse. at enim te in disciplinam meam tradideras—nam ita dixisti—domum meam ventitaras. ne tu, si id fecisses, melius famae, melius pudicitiae tuae consuluisses. sed neque fecisti nec, si cuperes, tibi id per C. Curionem facere licuisset.
You said you had ceded the canvass for the augurate to me. O incredible audacity! O effrontery beyond words! At the time when, with the whole college asking for me, Gnaeus Pompeius and Quintus Hortensius nominated me as augur — for one was not allowed to be nominated by more than two — you were neither solvent, nor did you suppose you could be safe in any way except by the overthrow of the commonwealth. Could you in fact have stood for the augurate at that time, when Curio was not in Italy? Or could you, at the time when you were made augur, have carried a single tribe without Curio? Whose intimates were even condemned for violence, because they had been too zealous in your behalf.
auguratus petitionem mihi te concessisse dixisti. O incredibilem audaciam, o impudentiam praedicandam! quo enim tempore me augurem a toto conlegio expetitum Cn. Pompeius et Q. Hortensius nominaverunt—nec enim licebat a pluribus nominari—tu nec solvendo eras nec te ullo modo nisi eversa re publica incolumem fore putabas. poteras autem eo tempore auguratum petere cum in Italia Curio non esset, aut tum cum es factus unam tribum sine Curione ferre potuisses? cuius etiam familiares de vi condemnati sunt, quod tui nimis studiosi fuissent.
“But I have enjoyed a kindness from you.” Of what kind? Although that very thing you cite, I have always carried before me openly: I preferred to confess myself in your debt rather than to seem ungrateful in the eyes of any less prudent man. But what kindness? That you did not kill me at Brundisium? Could you have killed a man whom the very victor himself — who, as you yourself used to boast, had conferred on you the chieftainship from among his band of brigands — had wished to be safe, had ordered to come back into Italy? Grant that you could have. What is any other kindness of brigands, senators, except that they can tell over the men to whom they granted life by not taking it? And if that were a kindness, the men who killed the very one by whom they had been spared — men whom you yourself are accustomed to call most distinguished — would never have won such glory. What sort of kindness, again, is it that you have refrained from a wicked crime? In which it ought to have been less pleasing to me that I was not killed by you than wretched that you could do that thing with impunity.
at beneficio sum tuo usus. quo? quamquam illud ipsum quod commemoras semper prae me tuli: malui me tibi debere confiteri quam cuiquam minus prudenti non satis gratus videri. sed quo beneficio? quod me Brundisi non occideris? quem ipse victor qui tibi, ut tute gloriari solebas, detulerat ex latronibus suis principatum, salvum esse voluisset, in Italiam ire iussisset, eum tu occideres? fac potuisse. quod est aliud, patres conscripti, beneficium latronum nisi ut commemorare possint eis se dedisse vitam quibus non ademerint? quod si esset beneficium, numquam qui illum interfecerunt a quo erant conservati, quos tu ipse clarissimos viros soles appellare, tantam essent gloriam consecuti. quale autem beneficium est quod te abstinueris nefario scelere? qua in re non tam iucundum mihi videri debuit non interfectum me a te quam miserum te id impune facere potuisse.
But suppose it a kindness, since no greater could be had from a brigand: in what respect can you call me ungrateful? Or ought I not to have complained of the ruin of the commonwealth, for fear of seeming ungrateful to you? In that complaint — wretched indeed and grievous, but for me, by reason of the rank in which the Senate and the Roman people have placed me, a necessary one — what was said by me in insult, what not in moderation, what not in friendship? What temperance, after all, was required, complaining of Marcus Antonius and yet refraining from abuse, when you had squandered what was left of the commonwealth, when in your house everything was for sale in the foulest market, when you confessed that laws which had never been promulgated were carried both about you and by you, when you as augur had suppressed the auspices and as consul the tribunician veto, when you were guarded in the most disgraceful fashion by armed men, when day by day in your disreputable household you committed every kind of impurity, being worn out with wine and with debauchery?
sed sit beneficium, quando quidem maius accipi a latrone nullum potuit: in quo potes me dicere ingratum? an de interitu rei publicae queri non debui, ne in te ingratus viderer? at in illa querela misera quidem et luctuosa, sed mihi pro hoc gradu in quo me senatus populusque Romanus conlocavit necessaria, quid est dictum a me cum contumelia, quid non moderate, quid non amice? quod quidem cuius temperantiae fuit, de M. Antonio querentem abstinere maledicto, praesertim cum tu reliquias rei publicae dissipavisses, cum domi tuae turpissimo mercatu omnia essent venalia, cum leges eas quae numquam promulgatae essent et de te et a te latas confiterere, cum auspicia augur, intercessionem consul sustulisses, cum esses foedissime stipatus armatis, cum omnis impuritates impudica in domo cotidie susciperes vino lustrisque confectus.
Yet I, as if my contest were with Marcus Crassus, with whom I have had many a great quarrel, and not with a single worthless gladiator, while complaining gravely about the commonwealth, said nothing about the man. And so today I shall make him understand how great a kindness he received from me on that occasion. Furthermore, he even read out a letter which he said I had sent to him — a man devoid of any breeding, and ignorant of common civility. For who that has the slightest knowledge of decent men’s usages ever brought into public and read aloud, on the occasion of some offence, a letter sent to him by a friend? What is this but to take from life the partnership of life, to take away the conversation of friends in absence? How many jokes commonly appear in letters which, brought out, would seem inept; how many serious things which still must in no way be made public!
at ego, tamquam mihi cum M. Crasso contentio esset, quocum multae et magnae fuerunt, non cum uno gladiatore nequissimo, de re publica graviter querens de homine nihil dixi. itaque hodie perficiam ut intellegat quantum a me beneficium tum acceperit. at etiam litteras, quas me sibi misisse diceret, recitavit homo et humanitatis expers et vitae communis ignarus. quis enim umquam qui paulum modo bonorum consuetudinem nosset, litteras ad se ab amico missas offensione aliqua interposita in medium protulit palamque recitavit? quid est aliud tollere ex vita vitae societatem, tollere amicorum conloquia absentium? quam multa ioca solent esse in epistulis quae, prolata si sint, inepta videantur, quam multa seria neque tamen ullo modo divolganda!
Let this stand to his rudeness: now look at his incredible stupidity. What have you, eloquent man, to set against me — you who nevertheless appear like a weasel to Sextus Seius and to Tiro Numisius? Since these very men stand at this very moment with their swords in sight of the Senate, I too will think you eloquent, if you show how you would defend them as common cutthroats. But what at last can you allege, if I deny that I ever sent you that letter? By what witness can you convict me? By the handwriting? In which you have a profitable proficiency. How can you, when the letter is in a secretary’s hand? I am beginning to envy your tutor, who is paid the enormous fee I shall presently disclose to teach you to know nothing.
sit hoc inhumanitatis: stultitiam incredibilem videte. quid habes quod mihi opponas, homo diserte, ut mustelae tamen Seio et Tironi Numisio videris? qui cum hoc ipso tempore stent cum gladiis in conspectu senatus, ego quoque te disertum putabo, si ostenderis quo modo sis eos inter sicarios defensurus. sed quid opponas tandem, si negem me umquam ad te istas litteras misisse? quo me teste convincas? an chirographo? in quo habes scientiam quaestuosam. qui possis? sunt enim librari manu. iam invideo magistro tuo, qui te tanta mercede quantam iam proferam nihil sapere doceat.
For what is less the part, I do not say of an orator, but of a human being, than to throw something at an adversary which, if he deny it in a word, the man who threw it cannot push any further? But I do not deny it, and on that very point I convict you not only of rudeness but of insanity. For what word is there in that letter which is not full of courtesy, of obligation, of goodwill? The whole of your charge is that I do not think ill of you in that letter, that I write to you as to a citizen, as to a good man, not as to a criminal and a brigand. Yet I, for my part, even if I had the right after the provocation, shall not produce your letters — letters in which you ask that you may be allowed, through my agency, to recall a certain man from exile, and swear that you will not do it against my will: and you obtain that from me. For why should I have set myself in the way of your audacity, which neither the authority of this order nor the estimation of the Roman people nor any laws could restrain?
quid enim est minus non dico oratoris, sed hominis quam id obicere adversario quod ille si verbo negarit longius progredi non possit qui obiecerit? at ego non nego, teque in isto ipso convinco non inhumanitatis solum sed etiam amentiae. quod enim verbum in istis litteris est non plenum humanitatis, offici, benevolentiae? omne autem crimen tuum est quod de te in his litteris non male existimem, quod scribam tamquam ad civem, tamquam ad bonum virum, non tamquam ad sceleratum et latronem. at ego tuas litteras, etsi iure poteram a te lacessitus, tamen non proferam: quibus petis ut tibi per me liceat quendam de exsilio reducere, adiurasque id te invito me non esse facturum; idque a me impetras. quid enim me interponerem audaciae tuae, quam neque auctoritas huius ordinis neque existimatio populi Romani neque leges ullae possent coercere?
But still, what was there for you to be asking of me, if the man on whose behalf you asked had already been brought back by a law of Caesar’s? But of course he wanted it to be my favour — in a matter in which there could be no favour even of his own, once a law had been passed. But since I have, senators, much to say both on my own behalf and against Marcus Antonius, of you I ask the one thing: that you hear me kindly while I speak for myself; the other I shall myself bring about — that when I speak against him, you shall listen attentively. At the same time I make this one entreaty: that if you know my moderation and self-restraint both in life in general and in speech, you should not think, when I have today answered him as he has provoked, that I have forgotten myself. I shall not handle him as a consul — not that he treats me as a consular. And yet he is in no way a consul, whether because he lives as he does, or because he conducts the commonwealth as he does, or because he was made consul as he was; I, beyond any dispute, am a consular.
verum tamen quid erat quod me rogares, si erat is de quo rogabas Caesaris lege reductus? sed videlicet meam gratiam voluit esse, in quo ne ipsius quidem ulla esse poterat lege lata. sed cum mihi, patres conscripti, et pro me aliquid et in M. Antonium multa dicenda sint, alterum peto a vobis ut me pro me dicentem benigne, alterum ipse efficiam ut, contra illum cum dicam, attente audiatis. simul illud oro: si meam cum in omni vita tum in dicendo moderationem modestiamque cognostis, ne me hodie, cum isti, ut provocavit, respondero, oblitum esse putetis mei. non tractabo ut consulem: ne ille quidem me ut consularem. etsi ille nullo modo consul, vel quod ita vivit vel quod ita rem publicam gerit vel quod ita factus est; ego sine ulla controversia consularis.
So that you might understand, then, what sort of consul he was professing himself to be, he flung my consulship in my teeth. A consulship, senators, which in name was mine, in fact yours. For what did I establish, what did I do, what did I undertake, except by the counsel, the authority, the judgment of this order? And these things you, a wise man — not only an eloquent one — dared to vituperate in the presence of those by whose counsel and wisdom they had been done? Yet who was found to vituperate my consulship besides yourself and Publius Clodius? Whose fate, indeed, awaits you, as it awaited Gaius Curio, since you have in your house what was fatal to both of them.
Vt igitur intellegeretis qualem ipse se consulem profiteretur, obiecit mihi consulatum meum. qui consulatus verbo meus, patres conscripti, re vester fuit. quid enim ego constitui, quid gessi, quid egi nisi ex huius ordinis consilio, auctoritate, sententia? haec tu homo sapiens, non solum eloquens, apud eos quorum consilio sapientiaque gesta sunt ausus es vituperare? quis autem meum consulatum praeter te et P. Clodium qui vituperaret inventus est? cuius quidem tibi fatum, sicuti C. Curioni, manet, quoniam id domi tuae est quod fuit illorum utrique fatale.
My consulship does not please Marcus Antonius. But it pleased Publius Servilius — to name first among the consulars of that age the one most recently dead; it pleased Quintus Catulus, whose authority shall live forever in this commonwealth; it pleased the two Luculli, Marcus Crassus, Quintus Hortensius, Gaius Curio, Gaius Piso, Manius Glabrio, Manius Lepidus, Lucius Volcatius, Gaius Figulus, Decimus Silanus, Lucius Murena, who were then consuls-elect; the same that pleased the consulars also pleased Marcus Cato, who in many things looked ahead as he was leaving life, but especially in this — that he did not see you consul. The most decisive judgment of all upon my consulship was Gnaeus Pompeius’s, who, as soon as he set eyes on me when leaving Syria, embraced me and gave me joy, saying that it was by my kindness he was to see his country again. But why do I list them one by one? In a most full session of the Senate the verdict was such that there was no man who did not give me thanks as to a parent, no one who did not refer his life, his fortunes, his children, and the commonwealth itself, as received back from me.
non placet M. Antonio consulatus meus. at placuit P. Servilio, ut eum primum nominem ex illius temporis consularibus qui proxime est mortuus; placuit Q. Catulo, cuius semper in hac re publica vivet auctoritas; placuit duobus Lucullis, M. Crasso, Q. Hortensio, C. Curioni, C. Pisoni, M’. Glabrioni, M’. Lepido, L. Volcatio, C. Figulo, D. Silano, L. Murenae, qui tum erant consules designati; placuit idem quod consularibus M. Catoni, qui cum multa vita excedens providit, tum quod te consulem non vidit. maxime vero consulatum meum Cn. Pompeius probavit qui, ut me primum decedens ex Syria vidit, complexus et gratulans meo beneficio patriam se visurum esse dixit. sed quid singulos commemoro? frequentissimo senatui sic placuit ut esset nemo qui mihi non ut parenti gratias ageret, qui mihi non vitam suam, fortunas, liberos, rem publicam referret acceptam.
But since the commonwealth has been bereft of those many such men whom I have named, let us come to the living — the two who, of the number of consulars, are still left. Lucius Cotta, a man of the highest talent and the highest prudence, decreed a public thanksgiving in the amplest terms for those very acts of mine which you reproach; and to him those very consulars I just named, and the whole Senate, gave their assent. That is an honour which, since the founding of this city, no man in the civil toga before me has received.
sed quoniam illis quos nominavi tot et talibus viris res publica orbata est, veniamus ad vivos qui duo de consularium numero reliqui sunt. L. Cotta, vir summo ingenio summaque prudentia, rebus eis gestis quas tu reprehendis supplicationem decrevit verbis amplissimis, eique illi ipsi quos modo nominavi consulares senatusque cunctus adsensus est; qui honos post conditam hanc urbem habitus est togato ante me nemini.
Lucius Caesar, your uncle, with what a speech, with what firmness, with what gravity did he deliver his judgment against his own sister’s husband — your stepfather! Him you ought to have had as the author and teacher of all your counsels and of your whole life; you preferred to be like your stepfather rather than your uncle. I, a stranger, made use of his counsel as consul: you, his sister’s son, have you ever referred a single matter of state to him? To whom does he refer? Immortal gods! To those, of course, whose very birthdays we have to hear announced. Antony has not come down to the Senate today.
L. Caesar, avunculus tuus, qua oratione, qua constantia, qua gravitate sententiam dixit in sororis suae virum, vitricum tuum! hunc tu cum auctorem et praeceptorem omnium consiliorum totiusque vitae debuisses habere, vitrici te similem quam avunculi maluisti. huius ego alienus consiliis consul usus sum: tu, sororis filius, ecquid ad eum umquam de re publica rettulisti? at ad quos refert? di immortales! ad eos scilicet quorum nobis etiam dies natales audiendi sunt. hodie non descendit Antonius.
Why not? He is throwing a birthday-feast in his pleasure-gardens. For whom? I shall name nobody: imagine some Phormio, some Gnatho, or even some Ballio. O the foul and disgraceful character of the man, his unbearable shamelessness, worthlessness, lust! When you have so close at hand a leading senator, a citizen above all his fellows — you refer no business of the commonwealth to him, but you refer it to men who have nothing of their own and are draining yours. Your consulship, no doubt, is for the public health; mine was a public ruin. Have you lost shame so utterly along with chastity that you dared to say this in the very temple in which I consulted that Senate which once flourishing presided over the lands of the earth, but in which you have set down the most abandoned of men with their swords?
cur? dat nataliciam in hortis. cui? neminem nominabo: putate tum Phormioni alicui, tum Gnathoni, tum etiam Ballioni. O foeditatem hominis flagitiosam, o impudentiam, nequitiam, libidinem non ferendam! tu cum principem senatorem, civem singularem tam propinquum habeas, ad eum de re publica nihil referas, referas ad eos qui suam rem nullam habent, tuam exhauriunt? tuus videlicet salutaris consulatus, perniciosus meus. adeone pudorem cum pudicitia perdidisti ut hoc in eo templo dicere ausus sis in quo ego senatum illum qui quondam florens orbi terrarum praesidebat consulebam, tu homines perditissimos cum gladiis conlocavisti?
Yet you have even dared — and what is there you would not dare? — to say that the Capitoline slope, while I was consul, was full of armed slaves. To force those infamous senatorial decrees through, I was bringing violence to bear, I suppose, upon the Senate. O wretch, whether you do not know these things — for you know nothing good — or whether you do know them, that you can speak with such effrontery in the presence of such men! For what Roman knight, what young man of noble blood besides yourself, what man of any order who remembered that he was a citizen, was not on the Capitoline slope, when the Senate was in this temple? Who did not give in his name? Although neither the secretaries were enough nor the tablets sufficient to hold their names.
at etiam ausus es—quid autem est quod tu non audeas?—clivum Capitolinum dicere me consule plenum servorum armatorum fuisse. Vt illa, credo, nefaria senatus consulta fierent, vim adferebam senatui. O miser, sive illa tibi nota non sunt—nihil enim boni nosti—sive sunt, qui apud talis viros tam impudenter loquare! quis enim eques Romanus, quis praeter te adulescens nobilis, quis ullius ordinis qui se civem esse meminisset, cum senatus in hoc templo esset, in clivo Capitolino non fuit, quis nomen non dedit? quamquam nec scribae sufficere nec tabulae nomina illorum capere potuerunt.
For when wicked men, accused of parricide against their country, were confessing, driven by the testimony of accomplices, by their own handwriting, by the voice almost of the letters themselves, that they had agreed to set fire to the city, to butcher the citizens, to lay Italy waste, to destroy the commonwealth — who was there who would not be roused to the defence of the common safety, especially when the Senate and the Roman people had a leader of such a kind that, if there were any such now, the same thing would have befallen you as befell them? He says that the body of his stepfather was not given by me for burial. Yet not even Publius Clodius ever said this — and since I was rightly his enemy, I grieve that you have now surpassed him in every vice.
etenim cum homines nefarii de patriae parricidio confiterentur, consciorum indiciis, sua manu, voce paene litterarum coacti se urbem inflammare, civis trucidare, vastare Italiam, delere rem publicam consensisse, quis esset qui ad salutem communem defendendam non excitaretur, praesertim cum senatus populusque Romanus haberet ducem, qualis si qui nunc esset, tibi idem quod illis accidit contigisset? ad sepulturam corpus vitrici sui negat a me datum. hoc vero ne P. quidem Clodius dixit umquam: quem, quia iure ei inimicus fui, doleo a te omnibus vitiis iam esse superatum.
What again came into your mind, to recall to our memory that you had been brought up at the house of Publius Lentulus? Or were you afraid we should not think that nature alone could have brought you out so utterly worthless, had there not been the addition of training as well? But you were so far out of your wits that throughout the whole of your speech you fought against yourself — saying not only things that did not hang together, but things sharply disjoined and contrary, so that there was less of a contest between me and you than between you and yourself. You confessed that your stepfather had been involved in so great a crime, and yet complained that he was punished for it. So you praised what is properly mine, and reproached what belongs wholly to the Senate. For the arrest of the guilty was my act, the punishment was the Senate’s. The eloquent man does not understand that the very person he is speaking against is praised by himself, while those before whom he speaks are reviled.
qui autem tibi venit in mentem redigere in memoriam nostram te domi P. Lentuli esse educatum? an verebare ne non putaremus natura te potuisse tam improbum evadere, nisi accessisset etiam disciplina? tam autem eras excors ut tota in oratione tua tecum ipse pugnares, non modo non cohaerentia inter se diceres, sed maxime diiuncta atque contraria, ut non tanta mecum quanta tibi tecum esset contentio. vitricum tuum fuisse in tanto scelere fatebare, poena adfectum querebare. ita quod proprie meum est laudasti; quod totum est senatus reprehendisti. nam comprehensio sontium mea, animadversio senatus fuit. homo disertus non intellegit eum quem contra dicit laudari a se; eos apud quos dicit vituperari.
And now what audacity — I do not call it that, for he covets to be called bold — but what stupidity, in which he conquers all men, though it is the very thing he least wishes to be called, that he should make mention of the Capitoline slope, when armed men move about among our benches, when in this very temple of Concord — immortal gods! — in which, when I was consul, those saving opinions were delivered by which we have lived down to this day, men are posted with swords drawn. Accuse the Senate; accuse the equestrian order, which was then joined with the Senate; accuse all the orders, all the citizens — provided only that you confess that this very order is at this moment besieged by Ituraeans. You say these things so impudently not because of audacity, but because you do not see how violently your statements collide with one another. Surely you have no sense at all. For what is more foolish than, when you yourself have taken up arms ruinous to the commonwealth, to reproach another with arms that brought it safety?
iam illud cuius est, non dico audaciae—cupit enim se audacem —sed, quod minime volt, stultitiae, qua vincit omnis, clivi Capitolini mentionem facere, cum inter subsellia nostra versentur armati, cum in hac cella Concordiae, di immortales! in qua me consule salutares sententiae dictae sunt, quibus ad hanc diem viximus, cum gladiis homines conlocati stent? accusa senatum; accusa equestrem ordinem qui tum cum senatu copulatus fuit; accusa omnis ordines, omnis civis, dum confiteare hunc ordinem hoc ipso tempore ab Ituraeis circumsederi. haec tu non propter audaciam dicis tam impudenter, sed quia tantam rerum repugnantiam non vides. nihil profecto sapis. quid est enim dementius quam, cum rei publicae perniciosa arma ipse ceperis, obicere alteri salutaria?
And in one passage you even wished to be witty. Good gods, how that did not become you! In which you are not without some blame yourself. For you might have got some salt from your mime-actress wife. “Let arms yield to the toga.” What? Did they not then yield? But later the toga yielded to your arms. Let us therefore enquire which was the better thing — that the arms of criminals should yield to the liberty of the Roman people, or that our liberty should yield to your arms. Nor indeed shall I answer you any further about my verses: I shall say only this briefly: that you know neither those nor any letters at all; and that I never failed either the commonwealth or my friends, and yet, through all kinds of monuments of mine, I have achieved as much by my spare-time labours as to bring some usefulness to the youth and some praise to the Roman name through my night-watches and my writings. But these are not topics for the present hour: let us look at greater things.
at etiam quodam loco facetus esse voluisti. quam id te, di boni, non decebat! in quo est tua culpa non nulla. aliquid enim salis a mima uxore trahere potuisti. ‘ cedant arma togae.’ quid? tum nonne cesserunt? at postea tuis armis cessit toga. quaeramus igitur utrum melius fuerit libertati populi Romani sceleratorum arma an libertatem nostram armis tuis cedere. nec vero tibi de versibus plura respondebo: tantum dicam breviter, te neque illos neque ullas omnino litteras nosse; me nec rei publicae nec amicis umquam defuisse, et tamen omni genere monumentorum meorum perfecisse operis subsicivis ut meae vigiliae meaeque litterae et iuventuti utilitatis et nomini Romano laudis aliquid adferrent. sed haec non huius temporis: maiora videamus.
You said that Publius Clodius was killed by my counsel. What would men have thought, if he had been killed at the time when you yourself pursued him with a sword in the forum, in sight of the Roman people, and would have finished the business, had he not flung himself onto the staircase of a bookshop and, with the entrance blocked, checked your onset? I confess that I favoured you in that — though even you do not say I urged it on. As for Milo, I could not even favour him; for he had finished the business before anyone suspected him about to do it. “But I urged it on.” Was Milo’s spirit then such that he could not benefit the commonwealth without a prompter? “But I rejoiced.” What then? In the universal joy of the city, was I alone to be sad?
P. Clodium meo consilio interfectum esse dixisti. quidnam homines putarent, si tum occisus esset cum tu illum in foro inspectante populo Romano gladio insecutus es negotiumque transegisses, nisi se ille in scalas tabernae librariae coniecisset eisque oppilatis impetum tuum compressisset? quod quidem ego favisse me tibi fateor, suasisse ne tu quidem dicis. at Miloni ne favere quidem potui; prius enim rem transegit quam quisquam eum facturum id suspicaretur. at ego suasi. scilicet is animus erat Milonis ut prodesse rei publicae sine suasore non posset. at laetatus sum. quid ergo? in tanta laetitia cunctae civitatis me unum tristem esse oportebat?
Although on the death of Clodius an inquiry was set up, hardly established with sufficient prudence — for what need was there of an inquiry by a new law into a man who had killed another, when there was already an inquiry established by law? — still an inquiry was made. So what no man said against me when the case was being tried, you have now been found, all these years afterwards, to say.
quamquam de morte Clodi fuit quaestio non satis prudenter illa quidem constituta— quid enim attinebat nova lege quaeri de eo qui hominem occidisset, cum esset legibus quaestio constituta?—quaesitum est tamen. quod igitur, cum res agebatur, nemo in me dixit, id tot annis post tu es inventus qui diceres?
As to what you have dared to say — and that at length — that by my agency Pompey was separated from Caesar’s friendship, and that on that account, through my fault, the civil war was born: in that, you have not erred in the substance, but, what is the chief thing, in the dates. While that excellent citizen Marcus Bibulus was consul, I omitted nothing, so far as I could do and strive, to call Pompey away from his union with Caesar. In that, Caesar was the more fortunate. For he himself separated Pompey from intimacy with me. But after Pompey had given himself wholly over to Caesar, why should I have tried to drag him away from him? It would have been folly to hope, effrontery to urge it.
quod vero dicere ausus es idque multis verbis, opera mea Pompeium a Caesaris amicitia esse diiunctum ob eamque causam culpa mea bellum civile esse natum, in eo non tu quidem tota re sed, quod maximum est, temporibus errasti. ego M. Bibulo, praestantissimo civi, consule nihil praetermisi, quantum facere enitique potui, quin Pompeium a Caesaris coniunctione avocarem. in quo Caesar felicior fuit. ipse enim Pompeium a mea familiaritate diiunxit. postea vero quam se totum Pompeius Caesari tradidit, quid ego illum ab eo distrahere conarer? stulti erat sperare, suadere impudentis.
Yet there were two occasions on which I urged Pompey to something against Caesar. Reproach me for these, if you can: the one, that he should not extend Caesar’s command for five years more; the other, that he should not suffer a law to be carried that an account should be taken of him though absent. Had I persuaded him on either of these, we should never have fallen into these miseries. And I, again, when Pompey had now made over all his resources, both his own and those of the Roman people, to Caesar, and was beginning too late to see what I had long before foreseen, and when I saw that an unholy war was being brought upon the country, did not cease to be the advocate of peace, concord, and a settlement. And that saying of mine is known to many: “Would, Gnaeus Pompeius, that you had either never entered a partnership with Gaius Caesar, or never broken it off. The one would have been a mark of your weight, the other of your prudence.” These, Marcus Antonius, were always my counsels both about Pompey and about the commonwealth. Had they prevailed, the commonwealth would stand; you, by your villainies, your destitution, your infamy, would have fallen.
duo tamen tempora inciderunt quibus aliquid contra Caesarem Pompeio suaserim. ea velim reprehendas, si potes: unum ne quinquenni imperium Caesari prorogaret, alterum ne pateretur ferri ut absentis eius ratio haberetur. quorum si utrumvis persuasissem, in has miserias numquam incidissemus. atque idem ego, cum iam opes omnis et suas et populi Romani Pompeius ad Caesarem detulisset, seroque ea sentire coepisset quae multo ante provideram, inferrique patriae bellum viderem nefarium, pacis, concordiae, compositionis auctor esse non destiti, meaque illa vox est nota multis: ‘Vtinam, Cn. Pompei, cum C. Caesare societatem aut numquam coisses aut numquam diremisses! fuit alterum gravitatis, alterum prudentiae tuae.’ haec mea, M. Antoni, semper et de Pompeio et de re publica consilia fuerunt. quae si valuissent, res publica staret, tu tuis flagitiis, egestate, infamia concidisses.
But these are old matters; the recent one is that Caesar was killed by my counsel. I am afraid now, senators — and that would be the basest of things — that I should seem to have suborned a sham prosecutor to be brought against me, who not only would adorn me with my own praises but would even load me with the praises of others. For who ever heard my name in that fellowship of a most glorious deed? Whose name, on the other hand, of any who had been in that number, was kept secret? Kept secret, did I say? Whose was not at once made public? I should sooner say that some men have boasted of having been in that fellowship although they were not partners, than that any one of them who actually was, was willing to be hidden.
sed haec vetera, illud vero recens, Caesarem meo consilio interfectum. iam vereor, patres conscripti, ne, quod turpissimum est, praevaricatorem mihi apposuisse videar, qui me non solum meis laudibus ornaret sed etiam oneraret alienis. quis enim meum in ista societate gloriosissimi facti nomen audivit? cuius autem qui in eo numero fuisset nomen est occultatum? occultatum dico? cuius non statim divolgatum? Citius dixerim iactasse se aliquos ut fuisse in ea societate viderentur, cum conscii non fuissent, quam ut quisquam celari vellet qui fuisset.
How probable, again, is it that, among so many men, some of them obscure and some of them young men, no one keeping his secret, my name could have lain hidden? Indeed, if instigators had been needed for the freeing of their country, with the actors ready to hand, would I have prompted Brutuses, each of whom saw daily before him the image of Lucius Brutus, and one of whom saw also that of Ahala? Would these men, then, with such ancestors, have sought counsel rather from strangers than from their own, rather from outside than at home? What? Did Gaius Cassius, born in that family which has never endured the lordship — not even the power — of anyone, want me as instigator, I suppose: a man who would, even without these most distinguished men, have finished the business in Cilicia at the mouth of the river Cydnus, had Caesar put in to the bank he had chosen rather than to the opposite one?
quam veri simile porro est in tot hominibus partim obscuris, partim adulescentibus neminem occultantibus meum nomen latere potuisse? etenim si auctores ad liberandam patriam desiderarentur illis actoribus, Brutos ego impellerem, quorum uterque L. Bruti imaginem cotidie videret, alter etiam Ahalae? hi igitur his maioribus ab alienis potius consilium peterent quam a suis et foris potius quam domo? quid? C. Cassius in ea familia natus quae non modo dominatum, sed ne potentiam quidem cuiusquam ferre potuit, me auctorem, credo, desideravit: qui etiam sine his clarissimis viris hanc rem in Cilicia ad ostium fluminis Cydni confecisset, si ille ad eam ripam quam constituerat, non ad contrariam navis appulisset. Cn.
Was it I who roused Gnaeus Domitius to the recovery of liberty — not the death of his most distinguished father, nor his uncle’s, nor his own stripped honour, but my authority? Or did I persuade Gaius Trebonius, whom I should not have dared even to advise? Whereto the commonwealth owes him still greater gratitude, who preferred the liberty of the Roman people to the friendship of one man, and chose rather to be the overthrower of despotism than to share in it. Or did Lucius Tillius Cimber follow me as his author? Whom I marvelled at for doing that deed more than I had thought him likely to do it; and marvelled at on this account, that he had been unmindful of the favours he had received, mindful of his country. What of the two Servilii — shall I call them the Cascas, or the Ahalas? — do you think these too were stirred up by my authority rather than by their love of the commonwealth? It would be long to go through the rest: and it was a glorious thing for the commonwealth that they were so many, a glorious thing for the men themselves.
Domitium non patris interitus, clarissimi viri, non avunculi mors, non spoliatio dignitatis ad recuperandam libertatem, sed mea auctoritas excitavit? an C. Trebonio ego persuasi? cui ne suadere quidem ausus essem. quo etiam maiorem ei res publica gratiam debet qui libertatem populi Romani unius amicitiae praeposuit depulsorque dominatus quam particeps esse maluit. an L. Tillius Cimber me est auctorem secutus? quem ego magis fecisse illam rem sum admiratus quam facturum putavi, admiratus autem ob eam causam quod immemor beneficiorum, memor patriae fuisset. quid duos Servilios —Cascas dicam an Ahalas?—et hos auctoritate mea censes excitatos potius quam caritate rei publicae? longum est persequi ceteros, idque rei publicae praeclarum fuisse tam multos, ipsis gloriosum.
But now remember in what fashion this acute man convicted me. “When Caesar had been killed,” he says, “Brutus at once held up his bloody dagger, and called Cicero by name, congratulating him on the recovery of liberty.” Why me, in particular? Because I knew of it? See whether this was not rather the cause of his calling me — that, having performed an act very like those I had performed, he called me as the most fitting witness that he had stood forth as a rival of my fame.
at quem ad modum me coarguerit homo acutus recordamini. ‘Caesare interfecto’ inquit ‘statim cruentum alte extollens Brutus pugionem Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus.’ cur mihi potissimum? quia sciebam? vide ne illa causa fuerit appellandi mei quod, cum rem gessisset consimilem rebus eis quas ipse gesseram, me potissimum testatus est se aemulum mearum laudum exstitisse.
But you — most stupid of all men — do you not understand that if (the thing of which you accuse me) it is a crime to have wished Caesar killed, it is also a crime to have rejoiced at Caesar’s death? For what difference is there between one who urges a deed and one who approves it? Or what does it matter whether I willed that it should be done, or am glad that it was done? Is there anyone, then — excepting those who rejoiced that he reigned — who either did not wish that to be done or did not approve it when done? All, then, are guilty. For all good men, so far as in them lay, killed Caesar: to some counsel was wanting, to some courage, to some opportunity; the will was wanting to none.
tu autem, omnium stultissime, non intellegis, si, id quod me arguis, voluisse interfici Caesarem crimen sit, etiam laetatum esse morte Caesaris crimen esse? quid enim interest inter suasorem facti et probatorem? aut quid refert utrum voluerim fieri an gaudeam factum? ecquis est igitur exceptis eis qui illum regnare gaudebant qui illud aut fieri noluerit aut factum improbarit? omnes ergo in culpa. etenim omnes boni, quantum in ipsis fuit, Caesarem occiderunt: aliis consilium, aliis animus, aliis occasio defuit; voluntas nemini.
But pay heed to the man’s stupor — or rather, his bestial dullness. For thus he spoke: “Brutus, whom I name in honour, holding the bloody dagger, called out Cicero’s name: from which it ought to be understood that he was an accomplice.” So I am called criminal by you because you suspect I suspected something; while he who carried the dripping dagger before him is named by you in honour. Let it be so. Let there be this stupor in your words: how much greater in your matters and opinions? Settle this at last, consul: do you wish the cause of the Brutuses, of Gaius Cassius, of Gnaeus Domitius, of Gaius Trebonius, and the rest to be what? Sleep off the drunkenness, I say, and breathe it out. Or must firebrands be set to you to rouse you, who sleep through so great a cause? Will you never understand that you must decide whether those who carried out that business were murderers or vindicators of liberty?
sed stuporem hominis vel dicam pecudis attendite. sic enim dixit: ‘Brutus, quem ego honoris causa nomino, cruentum pugionem tenens Ciceronem exclamavit: ex quo intellegi debet eum conscium fuisse.’ ergo ego sceleratus appellor a te quem tu suspicatum aliquid suspicaris; ille qui stillantem prae se pugionem tulit, is a te honoris causa nominatur? esto; sit in verbis tuis hic stupor: quanto in rebus sententiisque maior? constitue hoc, consul, aliquando, Brutorum, C. Cassi, Cn. Domiti, C. Treboni, reliquorum quam velis esse causam; edormi crapulam, inquam, et exhala. an faces admovendae sunt quae excitent tantae causae indormientem? numquamne intelleges statuendum tibi esse utrum illi qui istam rem gesserunt homicidaene sint an vindices libertatis.
Attend then a little while, and take up for one moment of time the thought of a sober man. I, who am, as I myself confess, an intimate of those men, and, as you charge, their associate, deny that there can be any middle term: I confess that they, unless they are the liberators of the Roman people and the saviours of the commonwealth, are worse than cut-throats, worse than murderers, worse even than parricides — if indeed it is a more dreadful thing to kill the father of one’s country than one’s own. And you, a wise and considered man, what do you say? If they are parricides, why have they always been named in honour by you both in this order and before the Roman people? Why was Marcus Brutus, on your motion, exempted from the laws should he have been absent from the city more than ten days? Why were the Apollinarian games celebrated with such unbelievable honour to Marcus Brutus? Why were provinces given to Brutus and Cassius? Why were quaestors added to them, why was the number of their legates increased? Yet these things were done through you. They are not, then, murderers. It follows that, by your own judgment, they are liberators, since there can be no third thing.
attende enim paulisper cogitationemque sobrii hominis punctum temporis suscipe. ego qui sum illorum, ut ipse fateor, familiaris, ut a te arguor, socius, nego quicquam esse medium: confiteor eos, nisi liberatores populi Romani conservatoresque rei publicae sint, plus quam sicarios, plus quam homicidas, plus etiam quam parricidas esse, si quidem est atrocius patriae parentem quam suum occidere. tu homo sapiens et considerate, quid dicis? si parricidas, cur honoris causa a te sunt et in hoc ordine et apud populum Romanum semper appellati? cur M. Brutus referente te legibus est solutus, si ab urbe plus quam decem dies afuisset? cur ludi Apollinares incredibili M. Bruti honore celebrati? cur provinciae Bruto, Cassio datae, cur quaestores additi, cur legatorum numerus auctus? atqui haec acta per te. non igitur homicidas. sequitur ut liberatores tuo iudicio, quando quidem tertium nihil potest esse.
How is it? Am I confusing you? For perhaps you do not sufficiently understand what is said with too great distinctness. But this is the sum of my conclusion: that since by your own judgment they have been acquitted of crime, they have been judged by the same judgment most worthy of the highest rewards. And so I now unsay my speech. I shall write to them that, if any chance ask, as you charged me with, whether the report be true, they should not deny it to anyone. For I fear that to have been concealed by them from this thing would be no honour to me, and to have shrunk back when invited would be the basest shame to me. For what thing was ever, holy Jupiter, done greater not only in this city but in all lands? What more glorious, what more commended to the eternal memory of men? In the partnership of this design, do you, as into the Trojan horse, enclose me with the chief men?
quid est? num conturbo te? non enim fortasse satis quae diiunctius dicuntur intellegis. sed tamen haec summa est conclusionis meae: quoniam scelere a te liberati sunt, ab eodem amplissimis praemiis dignissimos iudicatos. itaque iam retexo orationem meam. scribam ad illos ut, si qui forte, quod a te mihi obiectum est, quaerent sitne verum, ne cui negent. etenim vereor ne aut celatum me illis ipsis non honestum aut invitatum refugisse mihi sit turpissimum. quae enim res umquam, pro sancte Iuppiter! non modo in hac urbe sed in omnibus terris est gesta maior; quae gloriosior, quae commendatior hominum memoriae sempiternae? in huius me tu consili societatem tamquam in equum Troianum cum principibus includis?
I do not refuse it; I even give you thanks, in whatever spirit you do it. For so great a thing is it, that I do not compare with its praise the odium you wish to stir up against me. For what is more blessed than those whom you say have been driven out and banished by you? What place is there either so deserted or so uncivilized that, when they have come to it, does not seem to address them and to seek them out? What men so rude that, when they have looked upon them, do not think they have gained the greatest fruit of life? What posterity will be so unmindful, what books will be found so ungrateful, as not to follow their glory with the remembrance of immortality? Then enroll me, for my part, among such a number.
non recuso; ago etiam gratias, quoquo animo facis. tanta enim res est ut invidiam istam quam tu in me vis concitare cum laude non comparem. quid enim beatius illis quos tu expulsos a te praedicas et relegatos? qui locus est aut tam desertus aut tam inhumanus qui illos, cum accesserint, non adfari atque appetere videatur? qui homines tam agrestes qui se, cum eos aspexerint, non maximum cepisse vitae fructum putent? quae vero tam immemor posteritas, quae tam ingratae litterae reperientur quae eorum gloriam non immortalitatis memoria prosequantur? tu vero ascribe me talem in numerum.
But there is one thing I fear you will not approve: for if I had been in their counsel, I should have removed from the commonwealth not only the king but the kingship; and, if that pen had been mine that men say was, then, believe me, I should have finished not only the one act but the whole play. Although if to have wished Caesar killed is a crime, look, I beg you, Antony, what is to become of you, who are known beyond all doubt to have taken this counsel with Gaius Trebonius at Narbo, and on whose account, because of your partnership in that counsel, we saw you, when Caesar was being killed, drawn aside by Trebonius. But I, however — see how I deal with you, not as an enemy — I praise that you once thought rightly; I give thanks that you did not betray it; I forgive that you did not do it.
sed unam rem vereor ne non probes: si enim fuissem, non solum regem sed etiam regnum de re publica sustulissem; et, si meus stilus ille fuisset, ut dicitur, mihi crede, non solum unum actum sed totam fabulam confecissem. quamquam si interfici Caesarem voluisse crimen est, vide, quaeso, Antoni, quid tibi futurum sit, quem et Narbone hoc consilium cum C. Trebonio cepisse notissimum est et ob eius consili societatem, cum interficeretur Caesar, tum te a Trebonio vidimus sevocari. ego autem—vide quam tecum agam non inimice—quod bene cogitasti aliquando, laudo; quod non indicasti, gratias ago; quod non fecisti, ignosco.
The deed required a man. Yet if any one brought you into court and made use of the Cassian formula, “to whose advantage was it?” — have a care, I beg you, that you do not stick fast. Although indeed it was, as you yourself used to say, to the advantage of all who were unwilling to be slaves, and to you above all, who not only are not a slave but reign — you who freed yourself from an enormous debt at the temple of Ops; you who, by the same set of ledgers, dissipated a countless sum of money; to whose house so many things were brought from Caesar’s; in whose house there is the most lucrative manufactory of forged memoranda and signatures, the most shameful auction-block of lands, of towns, of exemptions, of revenues.
virum res illa quaerebat. quod si te in iudicium quis adducat usurpetque illud Cassianum, ‘cui bono fuerit,’ vide, quaeso, ne haereas. quamquam illud quidem fuit, ut tu dicebas, omnibus bono qui servire nolebant, tibi tamen praecipue qui non modo non servis sed etiam regnas; qui maximo te aere alieno ad aedem Opis liberavisti; qui per easdem tabulas innumerabilem pecuniam dissipavisti; ad quem e domo Caesaris tam multa delata sunt; cuius domi quaestuosissima est falsorum commentariorum et chirographorum officina, agrorum, oppidorum, immunitatium, vectigalium flagitiosissimae nundinae.
For indeed what other thing could have come to the rescue of your destitution and your debt except the death of Caesar? You seem somehow disturbed: do you secretly fear that this charge may be seen to touch you? I free you from your fear: no one will ever believe it; it is not your part to deserve well of the commonwealth; the commonwealth has its illustrious authors for that most beautiful deed; I say only that you rejoice at it, I do not allege that you did it. I have replied to the gravest charges: now those that remain must also be answered.
etenim quae res egestati et aeri alieno tuo praeter mortem Caesaris subvenire potuisset? nescio quid conturbatus esse videris: num quid subtimes ne ad te hoc crimen pertinere videatur? libero te metu: nemo credet umquam; non est tuum de re publica bene mereri; habet istius pulcherrimi facti clarissimos viros res publica auctores; ego te tantum gaudere dico, fecisse non arguo. respondi maximis criminibus: nunc etiam reliquis respondendum est.
You threw at me Pompey’s camp and that whole period of mine. At which time, indeed, if, as I said, my counsel and my authority had prevailed, you would today be in want, we should be free, the commonwealth would not have lost so many generals and armies. For I confess that when I foresaw what afterwards came to pass, I was in as great a grief as the rest of the best citizens, had they foreseen the same, would have been. I grieved, I grieved, senators, that the commonwealth, once preserved by your counsels and by mine, was within a short time about to perish. Nor indeed was I so untaught or so ignorant of affairs as to be broken in spirit out of greed for life — a life which, if I retained it, would consume me with anguish, and, if I gave it up, would release me from all troubles. I wished those most distinguished men, those lights of the commonwealth, to live: so many consulars, so many of praetorian rank, so many honourable senators, and besides that the whole flower of the nobility and the youth, and the armies of the best citizens: for if these had lived, however unfair the terms of peace — for to me every peace with our fellow citizens seemed better than civil war — we should be holding the commonwealth today.
castra mihi Pompei atque illud omne tempus obiecisti. quo quidem tempore si, ut dixi, meum consilium auctoritasque valuisset, tu hodie egeres, nos liberi essemus; res publica non tot duces et exercitus amisisset. fateor enim me, cum ea quae acciderunt providerem futura, tanta in maestitia fuisse quanta ceteri optimi cives, si idem providissent, fuissent. dolebam, dolebam, patres conscripti, rem publicam vestris quondam meisque consiliis conservatam brevi tempore esse perituram. nec vero eram tam indoctus ignarusque rerum ut frangerer animo propter vitae cupiditatem, quae me manens conficeret angoribus, dimissa molestiis omnibus liberaret. illos ego praestantissimos viros, lumina rei publicae, vivere volebam, tot consularis, tot praetorios, tot honestissimos senatores, omnem praeterea florem nobilitatis ac iuventutis, tum optimorum civium exercitus; qui si viverent, quamvis iniqua condicione pacis—mihi enim omnis pax cum civibus bello civili utilior videbatur—rem publicam hodie teneremus.
Had this opinion of mine prevailed, and had not those very men, on whose lives I was advising, stood most strongly against me out of an inflated hope of victory — to leave the rest aside — you, certainly, would never have remained in this order, or rather never have remained in this city. But, you say, my speech estranged the goodwill of Gnaeus Pompeius from me. Did Pompey love any man more, did he hold conversation or counsel with anyone more often? Which indeed was a great thing — that men who differed on the highest matters of the commonwealth should remain in the same habit of friendship. He saw what I felt and looked to, and I, on the other hand, saw the same of him. I looked first to the safety of the citizens, in order that we might afterwards look to their dignity; he, to their present dignity. Because each of us had something he was following, our disagreement was the more tolerable.
quae sententia si valuisset ac non ei maxime mihi quorum ego vitae consulebam spe victoriae elati obstitissent, ut alia omittam, tu certe numquam in hoc ordine vel potius numquam in hac urbe mansisses. at vero Cn. Pompei voluntatem a me alienabat oratio mea. an ille quemquam plus dilexit, cum ullo aut sermones aut consilia contulit saepius? quod quidem erat magnum, de summa re publica dissentientis in eadem consuetudine amicitiae permanere. ego quid ille et contra ille quid ego sentirem et spectarem videbat. ego incolumitati civium primum, ut postea dignitati possemus, ille praesenti dignitati potius consulebat. quod autem habebat uterque quid sequeretur, idcirco tolerabilior erat nostra dissensio.
But what that exceptional and almost godlike man felt about me, those know who followed him in his flight from Pharsalia to Paphos. Never was there any mention by him of me except an honourable one, except such as was full of the warmest friendly regret, when he confessed that I had seen more, but that he had hoped for better. And in the name of such a man you dare to assail me, when you confess yourself the friend of him whose property you have purchased at auction? But let that war be passed over, in which you were too fortunate. Nor shall I answer about the jokes you said I made in camp: those were camps full of cares; yet still men, however turbulent affairs may be, if only they are men, are sometimes relaxed in spirit.
quid vero ille singularis vir ac paene divinus de me senserit sciunt qui eum de Pharsalia fuga Paphum persecuti sunt. numquam ab eo mentio de me nisi honorifica, nisi plena amicissimi desideri, cum me vidisse plus fateretur, se speravisse meliora. et eius viri nomine me insectari audes cuius me amicum, te sectorem esse fateare? sed omittatur bellum illud in quo tu nimium felix fuisti. ne de iocis quidem respondebo quibus me in castris usum esse dixisti: erant quidem illa castra plena curae; verum tamen homines, quamvis in turbidis rebus sint, tamen, si modo homines sunt, interdum animis relaxantur.
But that the same man reproaches my sadness and the same my jocularity is great proof that in both I held a measure. You have said that no legacies come to me. Would that this charge of yours were true! More of my friends and connections would be alive. But how did that come into your mind? For I have entered on the books legacies of more than twenty millions of sesterces. Although in this respect I confess you are more fortunate. No one but a friend has made me his heir, that so, with whatever benefit there was, some grief at heart should be joined; while you, Lucius Rubrius of Casinum — a man you had never seen — made you his heir.
quod autem idem maestitiam meam reprehendit, idem iocum, magno argumento est me in utroque fuisse moderatum. hereditates mihi negasti venire. Vtinam hoc tuum verum crimen esset! plures amici mei et necessarii viverent. sed qui istuc tibi venit in mentem? ego enim amplius sestertium ducentiens acceptum hereditatibus rettuli. quamquam in hoc genere fateor feliciorem esse te. me nemo nisi amicus fecit heredem, ut cum illo commodo, si quod erat, animi quidam dolor iungeretur; te is quem tu vidisti numquam, L. Rubrius Casinas fecit heredem.
And see indeed how much he loved you, this man whose very colour, black or white, you do not know. He passed over his brother’s son — of Quintus Fufius, a most honourable Roman knight and his closest friend — whom he had always openly named as his heir, and does not even mention him: he made you his heir, whom he had never seen, or certainly never greeted. Tell me, please, if it is not too much trouble: Lucius Turselius — what was his face, what his stature, of what municipality, of what tribe? “I know nothing,” you will say, “except what estates he held.” So, disinheriting his brother, he was making you his heir. And besides this, you broke into many large estates of utter strangers, having driven out their true heirs by force, as though you were heir.
et quidem vide quam te amarit is qui albus aterne fuerit ignoras. fratris filium praeterit, Q. Fufi, honestissimi equitis Romani suique amicissimi, quem palam heredem semper factitarat, ne nominat quidem: te, quem numquam viderat aut certe numquam salutaverat, fecit heredem. velim mihi dicas, nisi molestum est, L. Turselius qua facie fuerit, qua statura, quo municipio, qua tribu. ‘ nihil scio’ inquies ‘nisi quae praedia habuerit.’ igitur fratrem exheredans te faciebat heredem. in multas praeterea pecunias alienissimorum hominum vi eiectis veris heredibus, tamquam heres esset, invasit.
Although what I have most marvelled at was this, that you dared to make mention of legacies, when you yourself had not taken your father’s. So, that you might collect these things, you most insane of men, you have been declaiming so many days in another man’s villa? Although you indeed, as your most intimate friends say, declaim for the sake of breathing out your wine, not for the sake of sharpening your wit. But yet, for the sake of a joke, you keep at hand a master — a rhetorician elected by your vote and that of your fellow-drinkers, to whom you have allowed to say what he pleases against you — a man witty enough, but with easy matter for sayings against you and yours. But see what a difference there is between you and your grandfather. He spoke gradually what was helpful to his case; you rush along with what is irrelevant.
quamquam hoc maxime admiratus sum, mentionem te hereditatum ausum esse facere, cum ipse hereditatem patris non adisses. haec ut conligeres, homo amentissime, tot dies in aliena villa declamasti? quamquam tu quidem, ut tui familiarissimi dictitant, vini exhalandi, non ingeni acuendi causa declamitas. at vero adhibes ioci causa magistrum suffragio tuo et compotorum tuorum rhetorem, cui concessisti ut in te quae vellet diceret, salsum omnino hominem, sed materia facilis in te et in tuos dicta dicere. vide autem quid intersit inter te et avum tuum. ille sensim dicebat quod causae prodesset; tu cursim dicis aliena.
But what a fee was paid to that rhetorician! Hear, hear, senators, and learn the wounds of the commonwealth. Two thousand acres of the Leontine plain you assigned to the rhetorician Sextus Clodius, and free of tax, that for so great a fee of the Roman people you should learn to know nothing. Did this too, you most audacious of men, come from Caesar’s memoranda? But I shall speak in another place of the Leontine land and of the Campanian, which lands he has fouled by snatching them from the commonwealth and giving them to the basest possessors. Now, since I have replied sufficiently to his charges, certain things must be said about the corrector and reformer of us himself. Nor shall I pour out all at once: so that, if there should be a further contest (and there will be), I may always come fresh; a faculty which the multitude of his vices and sins amply grants me.
at quanta merces rhetori data est! audite, audite, patres conscripti, et cognoscite rei publicae volnera. duo milia iugerum campi Leontini Sex. Clodio rhetori adsignasti et quidem immunia, ut populi Romani tanta mercede nihil sapere disceres. num etiam hoc, homo audacissime, ex Caesaris commentariis? sed dicam alio loco et de Leontino agro et de Campano, quos iste agros ereptos rei publicae turpissimis possessoribus inquinavit. iam enim, quoniam criminibus eius satis respondi, de ipso emendatore et correctore nostro quaedam dicenda sunt. nec enim omnia effundam, ut, si saepius decertandum sit, ut erit, semper novus veniam: quam facultatem mihi multitudo istius vitiorum peccatorumque largitur.
Shall we then inspect you from boyhood? So I think; let us begin from the beginning. Do you hold it in memory that, still wearing the boy’s bordered toga, you went bankrupt? “It is the fault of my father,” you will say. I grant it. Indeed, this is a defence full of filial piety. Yet this still belongs to your audacity, that you sat in the fourteen rows, when by the Roscian law a fixed place was set down for bankrupts, even for one who had gone bankrupt by the fault of fortune, not his own. You took on the man’s toga, which you straightway turned into a woman’s. At first a common prostitute; the wage of your shame was fixed, and not a small one; but soon Curio intervened, who drew you off from your trade as a courtesan, and, as if he had given you a matron’s stole, settled you in a fixed and steady marriage.
visne igitur te inspiciamus a puero? sic opinor; a principio ordiamur. tenesne memoria praetextatum te decoxisse? ‘Patris’ inquies ‘ista culpa est.’ concedo. etenim est pietatis plena defensio. illud tamen audaciae tuae quod sedisti in quattuordecim ordinibus, cum esset lege Roscia decoctoribus certus locus constitutus, quamvis quis fortunae vitio, non suo decoxisset. sumpsisti virilem, quam statim muliebrem togam reddidisti. primo volgare scortum; certa flagiti merces nec ea parva; sed cito Curio intervenit qui te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et, tamquam stolam dedisset, in matrimonio stabili et certo conlocavit.
No boy bought for lust was ever so much in the power of his owner as you were in Curio’s. How often did his father throw you out of his house, how often did he set guards to keep you from crossing the threshold? Yet you, with night for accomplice, with lust urging, with the wage driving, were let down through the tiles. Such infamies that house could endure no longer. Do you know that I am speaking of things known to me most fully? Recall that time when the elder Curio lay grieving on his bed; his son, throwing himself at my feet, weeping, commended you to me; begged that I would defend him against his own father, if he should demand back the six million sesterces — for he said he had gone bail for you to that amount. He himself, burning with love, kept declaring that, because he could not bear the longing of being parted from you, he would go into exile.
nemo umquam puer emptus libidinis causa tam fuit in domini potestate quam tu in Curionis. quotiens te pater eius domu sua eiecit, quotiens custodes posuit ne limen intrares? cum tu tamen nocte socia, hortante libidine, cogente mercede, per tegulas demitterere. quae flagitia domus illa diutius ferre non potuit. scisne me de rebus mihi notissimis dicere? recordare tempus illud cum pater Curio maerens iacebat in lecto; filius se ad pedes meos prosternens, lacrimans, te mihi commendabat; orabat ut se contra suum patrem, si sestertium sexagiens peteret, defenderem; tantum enim se pro te intercessisse dicebat. ipse autem amore ardens confirmabat, quod desiderium tui discidi ferre non posset, se in exsilium iturum.
What great evils of a most flourishing family did I then quiet, or rather lift away! I persuaded the father to discharge his son’s debt; to ransom the young man, endowed with the highest hope both of spirit and of talent, with the means of the family estate; and to keep him not only from your intimacy but even from meeting you, by the law and power of a father. Since you knew that all this had been done through me, would you have dared to challenge me with insults, had you not trusted those swords we see?
quo tempore ego quanta mala florentissimae familiae sedavi vel potius sustuli! patri persuasi ut aes alienum fili dissolveret; redimeret adulescentem, summa spe et animi et ingeni praeditum, rei familiaris facultatibus eumque non modo tua familiaritate sed etiam congressione patrio iure et potestate prohiberet. haec tu cum per me acta meminisses, nisi illis quos videmus gladiis confideres, maledictis me provocare ausus esses.
But let us now leave aside the rapes and the infamies: there are some things I cannot honourably name; while you, on the other hand, are the freer from constraint because you have admitted to deeds about you which you could not even hear from a modest enemy. But look at the rest of the course of his life, which I shall run through swiftly. For my spirit hurries on to the things he did in the civil war, in the gravest miseries of the commonwealth, and to those he does daily. Hear them attentively, as you do, I beg — though they are far better known to you than to me. For in such matters the spirit should be roused not only by the knowledge of things but by their recollection; although, I think, we should cut through the middle, lest we come too late to the end.
sed iam stupra et flagitia omittamus: sunt quaedam quae honeste non possum dicere; tu autem eo liberior quod ea in te admisisti quae a verecundo inimico audire non posses. sed reliquum vitae cursum videte, quem quidem celeriter perstringam. ad haec enim quae in civili bello, in maximis rei publicae miseriis fecit, et ad ea quae cotidie facit, festinat animus. quae peto ut, quamquam multo notiora vobis quam mihi sunt, tamen, ut facitis, attente audiatis. debet enim talibus in rebus excitare animos non cognitio solum rerum sed etiam recordatio; etsi incidamus, opinor, media ne nimis sero ad extrema veniamus.
In the tribunate he was the intimate of Clodius — yes, of him whose kindnesses to me he keeps reminding me of; he was the firebrand of all his fires, in whose house, even then, he was contriving something. He himself best knows what I mean. Thence the journey to Alexandria against the authority of the Senate, against the commonwealth, against religion; but he had Gabinius as his commander, with whom anything could be done in the rightest fashion. What then was the manner of his return, or of what kind? From Egypt, first into furthest Gaul rather than home. What home? For every man at that time had his own house, but you had none anywhere. Home, do I say? Where on the earth was there for you to set foot in your own, except the one Misenum, which you held with partners as men hold the Sisapo mines?
intimus erat in tribunatu Clodio qui sua erga me beneficia commemorat; eius omnium incendiorum fax, cuius etiam domi iam tum quiddam molitus est. quid dicam ipse optime intellegit. Inde iter Alexandream contra senatus auctoritatem, contra rem publicam et religiones; sed habebat ducem Gabinium, quicum quidvis rectissime facere posset. qui tum inde reditus aut qualis? prius in ultimam Galliam ex Aegypto quam domum. quae autem domus? Suam enim quisque domum tum obtinebat nec erat usquam tua. domum dico? quid erat in terris ubi in tuo pedem poneres praeter unum Misenum quod cum sociis tamquam Sisaponem tenebas.
You come from Gaul to stand for the quaestorship. Dare to say that you came to your mother before you came to me. I had received earlier a letter from Caesar that I should suffer satisfaction to be made me by you: and so I did not even let you speak about a reconciliation. Afterwards I was courted by you, you cultivated by me at your canvass for the quaestorship; at which time, with the approval of the Roman people, you attempted to kill Publius Clodius in the forum, and although you tried it of your own accord, not at my prompting, yet you said publicly that you did not think you would ever, except by killing him, make satisfaction to me for the wrongs you had done me. In which I much wonder why you say that Milo did that deed at my prompting, when you, of your own offer, were proposing to me the same thing, and I never urged you on. Although, if you persisted in it, I preferred that the matter should be referred to your glory than to my favour.
venis e Gallia ad quaesturam petendam. aude dicere te prius ad parentem tuam venisse quam ad me. acceperam iam ante Caesaris litteras ut mihi satis fieri paterer a te: itaque ne loqui quidem sum te passus de gratia. postea sum cultus a te, tu a me observatus in petitione quaesturae; quo quidem tempore P. Clodium approbante populo Romano in foro es conatus occidere, cumque eam rem tua sponte conarere, non impulsu meo, tamen ita praedicabas, te non existimare, nisi illum interfecisses, umquam mihi pro tuis in me iniuriis satis esse facturum. in quo demiror cur Milonem impulsu meo rem illam egisse dicas, cum te ultro mihi idem illud deferentem numquam sim adhortatus. quamquam, si in eo perseverares, ad tuam gloriam rem illam referri malebam quam ad meam gratiam.
You were made quaestor: then at once, without a decree of the Senate, without lots, without a law, you ran off to Caesar. For that was the one refuge, in your destitution, debt, worthlessness, and ruined manner of life, that you thought there was upon the earth. There, when you had filled yourself both with his largesses and with your own robberies — if to fill is to gulp down what one at once pours out again — you flew, in want, to the tribunate, that in that office, if you could, you might be like your man. Hear now, I beg, not what he has done shamefully and intemperately against himself and his domestic honour, but what he has done impiously and wickedly against us and our fortunes — that is, against the universal commonwealth. For from his crime, you will find, the beginning of all our evils was born.
quaestor es factus: deinde continuo sine senatus consulto, sine sorte, sine lege ad Caesarem cucurristi. id enim unum in terris egestatis, aeris alieni, nequitiae perditis vitae rationibus perfugium esse ducebas. ibi te cum et illius largitionibus et tuis rapinis explevisses, si hoc est explere, expilare quod statim effundas, advolasti egens ad tribunatum, ut in eo magistratu, si posses, viri tui similis esses. accipite nunc, quaeso, non ea quae ipse in se atque in domesticum decus impure et intemperanter, sed quae in nos fortunasque nostras, id est in universam rem publicam, impie ac nefarie fecerit. ab huius enim scelere omnium malorum principium natum reperietis.
For when in the consulship of Lucius Lentulus and Gaius Marcellus, on the Kalends of January, you were trying to prop up the commonwealth as it slipped and was almost falling, and were willing, even for Gaius Caesar himself, if he was of sound mind, to consult — then this man set his tribunate, sold and made over, against your counsels, and offered his neck to that axe which has cut off many men for lesser offences. Against you, Marcus Antonius, this Senate decreed — this Senate still entire, with so many of its lights not yet extinguished — what is usually decreed in the manner of our ancestors against an enemy in the toga. And you have dared to speak against me before the senators, when I had been judged the saviour by this order, and you the enemy of the commonwealth? The mention of that crime of yours has been broken off, but the memory has not been wiped out. So long as the race of men, so long as the name of the Roman people shall stand — which shall stand forever, if you will allow it — that pestilent veto of yours shall be named.
nam cum L. Lentulo C. Marcello consulibus Kalendis Ianuariis labentem et prope cadentem rem publicam fulcire cuperetis ipsique C. Caesari, si sana mente esset, consulere velletis, tum iste venditum atque emancipatum tribunatum consiliis vestris opposuit cervicesque suas ei subiecit securi qua multi minoribus in peccatis occiderunt. in te, M. Antoni, id decrevit senatus et quidem incolumis, nondum tot luminibus exstinctis quod in hostem togatum decerni est solitum more maiorum. et tu apud patres conscriptos contra me dicere ausus es, cum ab hoc ordine ego conservator essem, tu hostis rei publicae iudicatus? commemoratio illius tui sceleris intermissa est, non memoria deleta. dum genus hominum, dum populi Romani nomen exstabit—quod quidem erit, si per te licebit, sempiternum—tua illa pestifera intercessio nominabitur.
What was being done in the Senate eagerly, what rashly, when you, one young man, prevented the whole order from deciding about the safety of the commonwealth — not once but more than once — nor did you suffer anything to be done about the authority of the Senate with you in the way? But what was being done, except that you should not wish the commonwealth utterly to be destroyed and overturned, when neither the leaders of the state, by entreating, nor your elders, by warning, nor the assembled Senate, by acting, could move you from a vote that was sold and given up in advance? Then, after many things had been tried before, that wound was of necessity inflicted on you which has been inflicted upon few before you, none of whom escaped uninjured:
quid cupide a senatu, quid temere fiebat, cum tu unus adulescens universum ordinem decernere de salute rei publicae prohibuisti, neque semel, sed saepius, neque tu tecum de senatus auctoritate agi passus es? quid autem agebatur nisi ne deleri et everti rem publicam funditus velles, cum te neque principes civitatis rogando neque maiores natu monendo neque frequens senatus agendo de vendita atque addicta sententia movere potuit? tum illud multis rebus ante temptatis necessario tibi volnus inflictum est quod paucis ante te, quorum incolumis fuit nemo:
then this order gave arms against you to the consuls, and to the rest of the commands and powers: which you would not have escaped, had you not betaken yourself to the arms of Caesar. You, you, I say, Marcus Antonius, gave to Gaius Caesar, eager to throw all into confusion, the first cause for bringing war against his country. For what else was he alleging, what cause was he putting forward for his most insane plan and act, except that the veto had been disregarded, the tribunician right abolished, Antonius hemmed in by the Senate? I pass over how false these things are, how light, especially when there can be no just cause at all for any man to take up arms against his country. But of Caesar nothing: you, at any rate, must confess that the cause of a most ruinous war was lodged in your person.
tum contra te dedit arma hic ordo consulibus reliquisque imperiis et potestatibus: quae non effugisses, nisi te ad arma Caesaris contulisses. tu, tu, inquam, M. Antoni, princeps C. Caesari omnia perturbare cupienti causam belli contra patriam ferendi dedisti. quid enim aliud ille dicebat, quam causam sui dementissimi consili et facti adferebat, nisi quod intercessio neglecta, ius tribunicium sublatum, circumscriptus a senatu esset Antonius? omitto quam haec falsa, quam levia, praesertim cum omnino nulla causa iusta cuiquam esse possit contra patriam arma capiendi. sed nihil de Caesare: tibi certe confitendum est causam perniciosissimi belli in persona tua constitisse.
O wretched man if you understand this, more wretched still if you do not understand that this is committed to writing, this is handed down to memory, that not even the posterity of all the ages will ever be unmindful of it: that consuls were driven out of Italy, and with them Gnaeus Pompeius, who was the ornament and the light of the Roman people’s command, all the consulars who through ill-health could not follow that disaster and that flight, the praetors, the men of praetorian rank, the tribunes of the plebs, a great part of the Senate, the whole growing crop of the youth — in one word, the commonwealth driven and banished from its proper seats!
O miserum te, si haec intellegis, miseriorem, si non intellegis hoc litteris mandari, hoc memoriae prodi, huius rei ne posteritatem quidem omnium saeculorum umquam immemorem fore, consules ex Italia expulsos, cumque eis Cn. Pompeium quod imperi populi Romani decus ac lumen fuit, omnis consularis qui per valetudinem exsequi cladem illam fugamque potuissent, praetores, praetorios, tribunos plebis, magnam partem senatus, omnem subolem iuventutis, unoque verbo rem publicam expulsam atque exterminatam suis sedibus!
As, then, in seeds is the cause of trees and shrubs, so of this most mournful war you were the seed. You grieve that three armies of the Roman people have been killed: Antonius killed them. You long for our most distinguished citizens: them too Antonius snatched from you. The authority of this order has been struck down: Antonius struck it down. In short, all the evils we have seen since — and what evil have we not seen? — if we reckon rightly, we shall set down to the account of Antonius alone. As Helen was to the Trojans, so was this man to this commonwealth, the cause of war, the cause of pestilence and ruin. The rest of his tribunate was like its beginning. He carried through all the things which the Senate, with the commonwealth still safe, had brought about could not be done. Yet learn the crime upon crime that he has piled.
Vt igitur in seminibus est causa arborum et stirpium, sic huius luctuosissimi belli semen tu fuisti. doletis tris exercitus populi Romani interfectos: interfecit Antonius. desideratis clarissimos civis: eos quoque vobis eripuit Antonius. auctoritas huius ordinis adflicta est: adflixit Antonius. omnia denique, quae postea vidimus—quid autem mali non vidimus?—si recte ratiocinabimur, uni accepta referemus Antonio. Vt Helena Troianis, sic iste huic rei publicae belli causa, causa pestis atque exiti fuit. reliquae partes tribunatus principi similes. omnia perfecit quae senatus salva re publica ne fieri possent profecerat. cuius tamen scelus in scelere cognoscite.
He was restoring many men who had been ruined: among them no mention of his own uncle. If he was strict, why not against all? If he was merciful, why not toward his own people? But I leave the rest aside: Licinius Lenticula, condemned of gaming by the dicing-law, his own fellow-gambler, he restored — as though it were not lawful to play with one already condemned, but in order that what he had lost at dice he might pay off by the favour of the law. What reason did you give the Roman people why this man ought to be restored? That he was, no doubt, prosecuted in absence; that the case had been judged unheard; that there had been no real legal inquiry into gaming; that he had been overborne by force and arms; finally — what was said of your own uncle — that the court had been corrupted with money? None of these. But he was a good man and worthy of the commonwealth. That has no bearing on the matter; yet for my part, since being condemned is in itself nothing, if it were so I should forgive him. But the most worthless of all men, who did not hesitate even to play at dice in the forum, this man, condemned by the law on gaming, he has restored to full standing: does he not most openly profess his own taste?
restituebat multos calamitosos: in eis patrui nulla mentio. si severus, cur non in omnis? si misericors, cur non in suos? sed omitto ceteros: Licinium lenticulam de alea condemnatum, conlusorem suum, restituit, quasi vero ludere cum condemnato non liceret, sed ut quod in alea perdiderat beneficio legis dissolveret. quam attulisti rationem populo Romano cur eum restitui oporteret? absentem, credo, in reos relatum; rem indicta causa iudicatam; nullum fuisse de alea lege iudicium; vi oppressum et armis; postremo, quod de patruo tuo dicebatur, pecunia iudicium esse corruptum? nihil horum. at vir bonus et re publica dignus. nihil id quidem ad rem; ego tamen, quoniam condemnatum esse pro nihilo est, si ita esset, ignoscerem. hominem omnium nequissimum qui non dubitaret vel in foro alea ludere, lege quae est de alea condemnatum qui in integrum restituit, is non apertissime studium suum ipse profitetur?
In that same tribunate, when Caesar, on his way to Spain, had committed Italy to him to trample on, what a journey he made, what a tour of the municipal towns! I know that I am moving in things made widely public by the talk of all men, and that what I am saying and shall say is better known to all who were then in Italy than to me who was not. Yet I shall mark down each detail, although in no way will my speech come up to your knowledge. For what ever in the world was heard of, of so great an outrage, so great a baseness, so great a disgrace?
in eodem vero tribunatu, cum Caesar in Hispaniam proficiscens huic conculcandam Italiam tradidisset, quae fuit eius peragratio itinerum, lustratio municipiorum! scio me in rebus celebratissimis omnium sermone versari, eaque quae dico dicturusque sum notiora esse omnibus qui in Italia tum fuerunt quam mihi qui non fui: notabo tamen singulas res, etsi nullo modo poterit oratio mea satis facere vestrae scientiae. etenim quod umquam in terris tantum flagitium exstitisse auditum est, tantam turpitudinem, tantum dedecus.
A tribune of the plebs was being carried in a war-chariot; laurelled lictors went before him; among them an open litter was borne in which a mime-actress was carried, whom the honest townsmen of the country towns, coming out of necessity to meet him, greeted not by her well-known and theatrical name, but as Volumnia. There followed a four-wheeled coach with pimps, the basest of his companions; his mother, cast aside, followed behind the mistress of her impure son as if she had been her daughter-in-law. O the calamitous fertility of that miserable woman! With the footprints of these infamies that fellow stamped all the municipal towns, the prefectures, the colonies, in short the whole of Italy.
vehebatur in essedo tribunus plebis; lictores laureati antecedebant, inter quos aperta lectica mima portabatur, quam ex oppidis municipales homines honesti, obviam necessario prodeuntes, non noto illo et mimico nomine, sed Volumniam consalutabant. sequebatur raeda cum lenonibus, comites nequissimi; reiecta mater amicam impuri fili tamquam nurum sequebatur. O miserae mulieris fecunditatem calamitosam! Horum flagitiorum iste vestigiis omnia municipia, praefecturas, colonias, totam denique Italiam impressit.
Of the rest of his deeds, senators, the censure is indeed difficult and slippery. He took part in the war; he glutted himself with the blood of fellow-citizens utterly unlike himself: he was fortunate, if there can be any fortune in crime. But since we wish provision to be made for the veterans — although the soldiers’ case is unlike yours, for they followed, you sought out a leader — nevertheless, that you may not call me into hatred with them, I shall say nothing of the kind of war it was. As victor you returned from Thessaly to Brundisium with your legions. There you did not kill me. A great kindness! For I admit you could have. And yet there was no man of those who were then with you who did not think me worth sparing.
reliquorum factorum eius, patres conscripti, difficilis est sane reprehensio et lubrica. versatus in bello est; saturavit se sanguine dissimillimorum sui civium: felix fuit, si potest ulla in scelere esse felicitas. sed quoniam veteranis cautum esse volumus, quamquam dissimilis est militum causa et tua—illi secuti sunt, tu quaesisti ducem—tamen, ne apud illos me in invidiam voces, nihil de genere belli dicam. Victor e Thessalia Brundisium cum legionibus revertisti. ibi me non occidisti. Magnum beneficium! potuisse enim fateor. quamquam nemo erat eorum qui tum tecum fuerunt qui mihi non censeret parci oportere.
For such is the love of one’s country that I was held sacred even by your legions, because they remembered that it had been saved by me. But suppose that you gave me what you did not take away, and that I have my life from you because it was not snatched from me: was I to allow this kindness of yours, through all your insults, to be guarded by me as I was guarding it, especially when you saw you were going to hear what follows?
tanta est enim caritas patriae ut vestris etiam legionibus sanctus essem, quod eam a me servatam esse meminissent. sed fac id te dedisse mihi quod non ademisti, meque a te habere vitam, quia non a te sit erepta: licuitne mihi per tuas contumelias hoc tuum beneficium sic tueri ut tuebar, praesertim cum te haec auditurum videres.
You came to Brundisium, into the very lap and embrace of your little mime. What of it? Am I lying? How wretched it is to be unable to deny what it is most shameful to confess! If you felt no shame before the country towns, did you feel none even before the veteran army? For what soldier was there who did not see her at Brundisium? Who did not know she had come so many days’ journey to congratulate you? Who did not grieve to learn so late what a worthless creature he had followed?
venisti Brundisium, in sinum quidem et in complexum tuae mimulae. quid est? num mentior? quam miserum est id negare non posse quod sit turpissimum confiteri! si te municipiorum non pudebat, ne veterani quidem exercitus? quis enim miles fuit qui Brundisi illam non viderit? quis qui nescierit venisse eam tibi tot dierum viam gratulatum? quis qui non indoluerit tam sero se quam nequam hominem secutus esset cognoscere?
Again, a tour through Italy with that same mime as companion; into the country towns a cruel and miserable settling of soldiers; in the city a foul plundering of gold, of silver, and most of all of wine. To which it was added that, with Caesar unaware, since he was at Alexandria, by the favour of his friends Antony was appointed master of horse. Then he supposed himself entitled by right to live with Hippias and to hand over the public post-horses to Sergius the mime-player; then he had picked out for his residence not this house which he now ill maintains, but the house of Marcus Piso. Why should I produce his decrees, his plunderings, the inheritances he conferred and the inheritances he tore away? Want compelled him; he had nowhere to turn: not yet had so vast a legacy come to him from Lucius Rubrius, nor from Lucius Turselius; not yet had he succeeded as sudden heir into the place of Gnaeus Pompeius and of many others who were away. He had to live in the manner of brigands, having only what he could plunder.
Italiae rursus percursatio eadem comite mima; in oppida militum crudelis et misera deductio; in urbe auri, argenti maximeque vini foeda direptio. accessit ut Caesare ignaro, cum esset ille Alexandreae, beneficio amicorum eius magister equitum constitueretur. tum existimavit se suo iure cum Hippia vivere et equos vectigalis Sergio mimo tradere; tum sibi non hanc quam nunc male tuetur, sed M. Pisonis domum ubi habitaret legerat. quid ego istius decreta, quid rapinas, quid hereditatum possessiones datas, quid ereptas proferam? cogebat egestas; quo se verteret non habebat: nondum ei tanta a L. Rubrio, non a L. Turselio hereditas venerat; nondum in Cn. Pompei locum multorumque aliorum qui aberant repentinus heres successerat. erat vivendum latronum ritu, ut tantum haberet, quantum rapere potuisset.
But let us pass over those deeds that belong to a more sturdy wickedness: let us speak rather of the most worthless kind of frivolity. You, with those jaws of yours, those flanks, that gladiator’s solidity of the whole body, had drained off such a quantity of wine at Hippias’s wedding that you were forced, the next day, to vomit in the sight of the Roman people. O the thing foul not only to see but to hear! If at dinner, in those huge cups of yours, this had happened to you, who would not think it disgraceful? But in an assembly of the Roman people, transacting public business, as master of horse, for whom even a belch would be a disgrace, this man, vomiting, filled his own lap and the whole tribunal with bits of food reeking of wine. But these things he himself confesses to be among his squalors: let us come to his splendours.
sed haec quae robustioris improbitatis sunt, omittamus: loquamur potius de nequissimo genere levitatis. tu istis faucibus, istis lateribus, ista gladiatoria totius corporis firmitate tantum vini in Hippiae nuptiis exhauseras ut tibi necesse esset in populi Romani conspectu vomere postridie. O rem non modo visu foedam sed etiam auditu! si inter cenam in ipsis tuis immanibus illis poculis hoc tibi accidisset, quis non turpe duceret? in coetu vero populi Romani negotium publicum gerens, magister equitum, cui ructare turpe esset, is vomens frustis esculentis vinum redolentibus gremium suum et totum tribunal implevit. sed haec ipse fatetur esse in suis sordibus: veniamus ad splendida.
Caesar withdrew himself from Alexandria, fortunate, as he himself thought, but in my judgment — since he who is unfortunate for the commonwealth can be fortunate in no respect — not fortunate at all. The spear was set up before the temple of Jupiter Stator, and the property of Gnaeus Pompeius — wretched me! for though my tears have been spent, my grief stays fixed within me — the property, I say, of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was made subject to the bitterest voice of the auctioneer. In that one matter alone the commonwealth, forgetful of its servitude, groaned aloud; and though men’s spirits were enslaved and all things were held in fear, yet the groan of the Roman people was free. When all were waiting to see what man would be found so impious, so deranged, so hostile to gods and men, that he would dare to approach that wickedness of buying a confiscated estate, no one was found but Antony — and that, though there were so many around that spear who would have dared all things else: one man was found who would dare what the audacity of all the rest had fled and recoiled from.
Caesar Alexandrea se recepit, felix, ut sibi quidem videbatur, mea autem sententia, qui rei publicae sit infelix, felix esse nemo potest. hasta posita pro aede Iovis Statoris bona Cn. Pompei —miserum me! consumptis enim lacrimis tamen infixus animo haeret dolor—bona, inquam, Cn. Pompei Magni voci acerbissimae subiecta praeconis. Vna in illa re servitutis oblita civitas ingemuit servientibusque animis, cum omnia metu tenerentur, gemitus tamen populi Romani liber fuit. exspectantibus omnibus quisnam esset tam impius, tam demens, tam dis hominibusque hostis qui ad illud scelus sectionis auderet accedere, inventus est nemo praeter Antonium, praesertim cum tot essent circum hastam illam qui alia omnia auderent: unus inventus est qui id auderet quod omnium fugisset et reformidasset audacia.
So great then a stupor possessed you, or, to speak more truly, so great a frenzy, that, first, when you of all men are the buyer of confiscated property, and second when you are the buyer of Pompey’s confiscated property, you do not know yourself accursed to the Roman people, do not know yourself loathsome, do not know that all the gods, all men are and shall be your enemies? And how insolently the glutton at once leapt upon the fortunes of that man by whose valour the Roman people was more dread to foreign nations, by whose justice more dear! Into that man’s wealth then, when he had suddenly gorged himself, he revelled with joy, an actor out of a mime, just now in want, suddenly rich. But, as it is in some poet, “Ill gained, ill spent.”
tantus igitur te stupor oppressit vel, ut verius dicam, tantus furor ut primum, cum sector sis isto loco natus, deinde cum Pompei sector, non te exsecratum populo Romano, non detestabilem, non omnis tibi deos, non omnis homines et esse inimicos et futuros scias? at quam insolenter statim helluo invasit in eius viri fortunas cuius virtute terribilior erat populus Romanus exteris gentibus, iustitia carior! in eius igitur viri copias cum se subito ingurgitasset, exsultabat gaudio persona de mimo, modo egens, repente dives. sed, ut est apud poetam nescio quem ‘male parta male dilabuntur.’
It is incredible, and like a portent, by what means he poured away in so few — I do not say months but days — a treasure so vast. There was a huge quantity of wine, a very great weight of finest silver, costly clothing, much and elegant furniture, and many splendid pieces in many places — not, indeed, those of a luxurious man, but the furnishings of an abundant one. In a few days nothing of these was left. What Charybdis was ever so voracious?
incredibile ac simile portenti est quonam modo illa tam multa quam paucis non dico mensibus sed diebus effuderit. maximus vini numerus fuit, permagnum optimi pondus argenti, pretiosa vestis, multa et lauta supellex et magnifica multis locis, non illa quidem luxuriosi hominis, sed tamen abundantis. Horum paucis diebus nihil erat. quae Charybdis tam vorax?
Do I call her Charybdis? She, if she ever was, was a single creature: Ocean itself, by Hercules, scarcely seems to have been able so quickly to engulf so many things, so scattered, set in places so remote. Nothing was locked, nothing sealed, nothing inventoried. Whole storehouses were given over to the basest of men; some things the male mime-players plundered, others the female; the house was packed with gamblers, full of drunkards; whole days through they drank, and in many places at once; gambling losses were piled on too — for not always was this man fortunate; on slaves’ beds in their cells you could see Gnaeus Pompeius’s purple coverlets spread. Cease, then, to wonder that these things were consumed so quickly. Not only the patrimony of one man, however ample, as that was, but cities and kingdoms, so great a worthlessness could swiftly have devoured. But he took the house too, and the gardens.
Charybdin dico? quae si fuit, animal unum fuit: Oceanus, me dius fidius, vix videtur tot res tam dissipatas, tam distantibus in locis positas tam cito absorbere potuisse. nihil erat clausum, nihil obsignatum, nihil scriptum. apothecae totae nequissimis hominibus condonabantur; alia mimi rapiebant, alia mimae; domus erat aleatoribus referta, plena ebriorum; totos dies potabatur atque id locis pluribus; suggerebantur etiam saepe —non enim semper iste felix—damna aleatoria; conchyliatis Cn. Pompei peristromatis servorum in cellis lectos stratos videres. quam ob rem desinite mirari haec tam celeriter esse consumpta. non modo unius patrimonium quamvis amplum, ut illud fuit, sed urbis et regna celeriter tanta nequitia devorare potuisset. at idem aedis etiam et hortos.
O monstrous audacity! Did you even dare to enter that house, to cross that most sacred threshold, to show your most impure face to the household gods of those rooms? A house which for a long time no man could look upon, no man pass by without tears — in this house are you not ashamed to lodge so long? In which, however empty of wits you are, still nothing can give you pleasure. When you look upon those beaks of ships in the vestibule, do you suppose that you are entering your own house? It cannot be. However devoid of mind and feeling you may be — as you are — yet you know yourself and your possessions and your people. Nor, indeed, do I believe you can ever, waking or in dreams, have a quiet mind. It must be that, violent and frenzied as you are, when the figure of that single man is set before you, you start up in terror from sleep, and rave often even when awake.
O audaciam immanem! tu etiam ingredi illam domum ausus es, tu illud sanctissimum limen intrare, tu illarum aedium dis penatibus os impurissimum ostendere? quam domum aliquamdiu nemo aspicere poterat, nemo sine lacrimis praeterire, hac te in domo tam diu deversari non pudet? in qua, quamvis nihil sapias, tamen nihil tibi potest esse iucundum. an tu illa in vestibulo rostra cum aspexisti, domum tuam te introire putas? fieri non potest. quamvis enim sine mente, sine sensu sis, ut es, tamen et te et tua et tuos nosti. nec vero te umquam neque vigilantem neque in somnis credo posse mente consistere. necesse est, quamvis sis, ut es, violentus et furens, cum tibi obiecta sit species singularis viri, perterritum te de somno excitari, furere etiam saepe vigilantem.
For my part I pity the very walls and roofs. For what had that house ever seen except what was chaste, what except from the best custom and the holiest training? For that man was, senators, as you know, as illustrious abroad as he was admirable at home; not more to be praised for his foreign achievements than for his domestic discipline. In his halls now there are stables instead of bedrooms, taverns instead of dining rooms. Although now he denies it: do not ask; he has reformed. He bade his wife — the famous one — take her things and go; he took her keys from her by the Twelve Tables; he turned her out. What a man esteemed as a citizen, how approved! Of his whole life there is nothing more honourable than that he divorced his mime.
me quidem miseret parietum ipsorum atque tectorum. quid enim umquam domus illa viderat nisi pudicum, quid nisi ex optimo more et sanctissima disciplina? fuit enim ille vir, patres conscripti, sicuti scitis, cum foris clarus tum domi admirandus, neque rebus externis magis laudandus quam institutis domesticis. huius in sedibus pro cubiculis stabula, pro conclavibus popinae sunt. etsi iam negat. nolite quaerere; frugi factus est: illam suam suas res sibi habere iussit, ex duodecim tabulis clavis ademit, exegit. quam porro spectatus civis, quam probatus! cuius ex omni vita nihil est honestius quam quod cum mima fecit divortium.
But how often he says: “Antony, both consul and Antony!” This is to say, both consul and most unchaste, both consul and most worthless of men. For what else is Antony? For if rank had been signified by the name, your grandfather, I believe, would once have said that he was both consul and Antony. He never said it. My colleague, your uncle, would have said it too, unless you are the only Antony. But I leave aside those faults which are not proper to the very part by which you have harried the commonwealth: I return to your own proper part, that is, to the civil war, which was born, kindled, and undertaken by your doing.
at quam crebro usurpat: ‘et consul et Antonius!’ hoc est dicere, et consul et impudicissimus, et consul et homo nequissimus. quid est enim aliud Antonius? nam si dignitas significaretur in nomine, dixisset, credo, aliquando avus tuus se et consulem et Antonium. numquam dixit. dixisset etiam conlega meus, patruus tuus, nisi si tu es solus Antonius. sed omitto ea peccata quae non sunt earum partium propria quibus tu rem publicam vexavisti: ad ipsas tuas partis redeo, id est ad civile bellum, quod natum, conflatum, susceptum opera tua est.
From which war, both through your timidity and through your lusts, you absented yourself. You had tasted citizen blood, or rather drained it down; you had been a standard-bearer in the line at Pharsalus; you had killed Lucius Domitius, a most illustrious and most noble man, and many besides who had fled from the battle, men whom Caesar, as he did some, might perhaps have saved, you most cruelly pursued and butchered. Such things being done and so many, what was the reason that you did not follow Caesar into Africa, especially as so great a part of the war was left? And so what place did you obtain with Caesar himself after his return from Africa? In what rank were you? You, whose quaestor he had been the commander, you, master of horse to him the dictator, prime mover of the war, the author of cruelty, the partner of his plunder, his “son” by his will, as you yourself used to say — you were dunned for the money you owed for the house, for the gardens, for the auction-lot.
cui bello cum propter timiditatem tuam tum propter libidines defuisti. gustaras civilem sanguinem vel potius exsorbueras; fueras in acie Pharsalica antesignanus; L. Domitium, clarissimum et nobilissimum virum, occideras multosque praeterea qui e proelio effugerant, quos Caesar, ut non nullos, fortasse servasset, crudelissime persecutus trucidaras. quibus rebus tantis talibus gestis quid fuit causae cur in Africam Caesarem non sequerere, cum praesertim belli pars tanta restaret? itaque quem locum apud ipsum Caesarem post eius ex Africa reditum obtinuisti? quo numero fuisti? cuius tu imperatoris quaestor fueras, dictatoris magister equitum, belli princeps, crudelitatis auctor, praedae socius, testamento, ut dicebas ipse, filius, appellatus es de pecunia quam pro domo, pro hortis, pro sectione debebas.
At first you answered with plain ferocity, and — not that I may seem to be all against you — what you said was nearly equitable and just: “Money? From me? Gaius Caesar? Why rather than I from him? Could he have conquered without me? Indeed he could not. I brought to him the cause of the civil war; I proposed pernicious laws; I bore arms against the consuls and commanders of the Roman people, against the Senate and the Roman people, against our ancestral gods, our altars, our hearths, against our country. Has he conquered for himself alone? Whose deed is in common, why should not their plunder be in common?” You demanded your right; but what was that to the matter?
primo respondisti plane ferociter et, ne omnia videar contra te, prope modum aequa et iusta dicebas: ‘A me C. Caesar pecuniam? cur potius quam ego ab illo? an sine me ille vicit? at ne potuit quidem. ego ad illum belli civilis causam attuli; ego leges perniciosas rogavi; ego arma contra consules imperatoresque populi Romani, contra senatum populumque Romanum, contra deos patrios arasque et focos, contra patriam tuli. num sibi soli vicit? quorum facinus est commune, cur non sit eorum praeda communis?’ ius postulabas, sed quid ad rem?
He had more power. And so, after he had shaken off your protests, he sent his soldiers both upon you and upon your sureties, when suddenly that famous list was brought out by you. What laughter from men, that there should be such a list, of such variety, of so many possessions, of which, apart from a part of Misenum, there was nothing the auctioneer could call his own. But the look of the auction itself was wretched: Pompey’s clothing, not abundant and that stained; some battered silver vessels of his; squalid slaves — so that we mourned that anything from those relics remained for us to see.
plus ille poterat. itaque excussis tuis vocibus et ad te et ad praedes tuos milites misit, cum repente a te praeclara illa tabula prolata est. qui risus hominum, tantam esse tabulam, tam varias, tam multas possessiones, ex quibus praeter partem Miseni nihil erat quod is qui auctionaretur posset suum dicere. auctionis vero miserabilis aspectus: vestis Pompei non multa eaque maculosa; eiusdem quaedam argentea vasa conlisa, sordidata mancipia, ut doleremus quicquam esse ex illis reliquiis quod videre possemus.
Yet this auction the heirs of Lucius Rubrius forbade by Caesar’s decree. The scoundrel was at a loss: he had nowhere to turn. Indeed, at those very times an assassin sent by him was said to have been seized in Caesar’s own house with a dagger; about whom Caesar openly inveighed against you in the Senate with complaint. Caesar set out for Spain, with a few days extended to you for paying because of your indigence. Even then you do not follow. So good a gladiator, so soon dismissed? Should anyone then fear this man, who in his own party — that is, in his own fortunes — was so timid?
hanc tamen auctionem heredes L. Rubri decreto Caesaris prohibuerunt. haerebat nebulo: quo se verteret non habebat. quin his ipsis temporibus domi Caesaris percussor ab isto missus deprehensus dicebatur esse cum sica: de quo Caesar in senatu aperte in te invehens questus est. proficiscitur in Hispaniam Caesar paucis tibi ad solvendum propter inopiam tuam prorogatis diebus. ne tum quidem sequeris. tam bonus gladiator rudem tam cito? hunc igitur quisquam qui in suis partibus, id est in suis fortunis, tam timidus fuerit pertimescat.
At length he set off for Spain; but, as he says, he could not arrive safely. How then did Dolabella arrive? Either, Antony, that cause should not have been undertaken, or, when you had undertaken it, defended to the end. Three times Caesar fought to the finish with citizens, in Thessaly, in Africa, in Spain. Dolabella was present in all these battles; in the Spanish one he even received a wound. If you ask my judgment, I should have wished he were not: but, while the plan from the beginning was to be censured, his constancy was to be praised. But what are you? At that time the sons of Gnaeus Pompeius were first seeking back their country. Granted; let this have been the common cause of the party. They were seeking back besides their ancestral gods, altars, hearths, their household Lar, into which you had broken. While they were seeking with arms what was theirs by law — though in things so most unjust what can there be of equity? — still, whom was it most equitable to fight against the sons of Gnaeus Pompeius? Whom? You, the auction-buyer of his goods.
profectus est aliquando tandem in Hispaniam; sed tuto, ut ait, pervenire non potuit. quonam modo igitur Dolabella pervenit? aut non suscipienda fuit ista causa, Antoni, aut, cum suscepisses, defendenda usque ad extremum. ter depugnavit Caesar cum civibus, in Thessalia, Africa, Hispania. omnibus adfuit his pugnis Dolabella; in Hispaniensi etiam volnus accepit. si de meo iudicio quaeris, nollem; sed tamen consilium a primo reprehendendum, laudanda constantia. tu vero quid es? Cn. Pompei liberi tum primum patriam repetebant. esto, fuerit haec partium causa communis. repetebant praeterea deos patrios, aras, focos, larem suum familiarem, in quae tu invaseras. haec cum peterent armis ei quorum erant legibus—etsi in rebus iniquissimis quid potest esse aequi?—tamen quem erat aequissimum contra Cn. Pompei liberos pugnare? quem? te sectorem.
Was it that you, at Narbo, might vomit on the tables of your hosts, while Dolabella in your stead fought in Spain? And what a return from Narbo! He even kept asking why I had so suddenly turned back from my journey. I lately explained, senators, the cause of my return. I wished, if I could, to be of use to the commonwealth even before the Kalends of January. For, as to your asking how I came back, first by light, not by darkness; then in shoes and toga, in no Gallic slippers and no cloak. But you even look at me, and that, as it seems, in anger. You would surely be reconciled with me now, if you knew how ashamed I am of your worthlessness, of which you yourself are not ashamed. Of all the disgraces of all men I have never seen, never heard of, anything more shameful. You who fancied yourself master of horse, you who for the next year were soliciting — or rather asking for — the consulship, ran through the country towns and colonies of Gaul, from which we, when the consulship was sought, not asked for, used to seek the consulship, in Gallic slippers and a cloak.
an ut tu Narbone mensas hospitum convomeres Dolabella pro te in Hispania dimicaret? qui vero Narbone reditus! etiam quaerebat cur ego ex ipso cursu tam subito revertissem. exposui nuper, patres conscripti, causam reditus mei. volui, si possem, etiam ante Kalendas Ianuarias prodesse rei publicae. nam, quod quaerebas quo modo redissem, primum luce, non tenebris; deinde cum calceis et toga, nullis nec Gallicis nec lacerna. at etiam aspicis me et quidem, ut videris, iratus. ne tu iam mecum in gratiam redeas, si scias quam me pudeat nequitiae tuae, cuius te ipsum non pudet. ex omnium omnibus flagitiis nullum turpius vidi, nullum audivi. qui magister equitum fuisse tibi viderere, in proximum annum consulatum peteres vel potius rogares, per municipia coloniasque Galliae, a qua nos tum cum consulatus petebatur, non rogabatur, petere consulatum solebamus, cum Gallicis et lacerna cucurristi.
But mark the man’s frivolity. When at about the tenth hour of the day he had reached Red Rocks, he hid in a certain little tavern, and there, concealing himself, drank himself drunk until evening; from there he was hurried in a light cart to the city, came to his house with his head muffled. The doorkeeper says: “Who are you?” “A messenger from Marcus.” He is brought straight to the woman for whose sake he had come, and handed her a letter. As she read it weeping — for it was written in the manner of a lover; the head of the letter was that henceforth he would have nothing with that mime-actress; that he had cast off all his love from there and poured it into her — as the woman wept the more abundantly, the tender-hearted man could not bear it, uncovered his head, fell upon her neck. O worthless man! For what else am I to say? Nothing can I say more aptly. So, to make a woman set eyes upon you, my catamite, unhoped-for, when you showed yourself unexpectedly — for that you struck the city with nightly terror and Italy with many days of fear?
at videte levitatem hominis. cum hora diei decima fere ad Saxa rubra venisset, delituit in quadam cauponula atque ibi se occultans perpotavit ad vesperum; inde cisio celeriter ad urbem advectus domum venit capite involuto. ianitor, ‘ quis tu?’ ‘A Marco tabellarius.’ confestim ad eam deducitur cuius causa venerat, eique epistulam tradidit. quam cum illa legeret flens—erat enim scripta amatorie; caput autem litterarum sibi cum illa mima posthac nihil futurum; omnem se amorem abiecisse illim atque in hanc transfudisse—cum mulier fleret uberius, homo misericors ferre non potuit, caput aperuit, in collum invasit. O hominem nequam! quid enim aliud dicam? magis proprie nihil possum dicere. ergo, ut te catamitum, nec opinato cum te ostendisses, praeter spem mulier aspiceret, idcirco urbem terrore nocturno, Italiam multorum dierum metu perturbasti?
And at home indeed you had a cause in love, abroad one yet more disgraceful, lest Lucius Plancus should sell up your sureties. Brought forward into a public meeting by a tribune of the plebs, when you had answered that you had come on your own business, you turned even the people into wits at your expense. But enough of trifles: let us come to greater things. You went very far out to meet Gaius Caesar on his return from Spain. You went quickly, came back quickly, that he might learn you to be, if not brave, yet at least energetic. You became, somehow, his familiar again. Caesar had this trait wholly: any man whom he had known to be plainly ruined in debt and in want, if he had known the same man also to be a wastrel and bold, this man he took most willingly into intimacy.
et domi quidem causam amoris habuisti, foris etiam turpiorem ne L. Plancus praedes tuos venderet. productus autem in contionem a tribuno plebis cum respondisses te rei tuae causa venisse, populum etiam dicacem in te reddidisti. sed nimis multa de nugis: ad maiora veniamus. C. Caesari ex Hispania redeunti obviam longissime processisti. celeriter isti, redisti, ut cognosceret te si minus fortem, at tamen strenuum. factus es ei rursus nescio quo modo familiaris. habebat hoc omnino Caesar: quem plane perditum aere alieno egentemque, si eundem nequam hominem audacemque cognorat, hunc in familiaritatem libentissime recipiebat.
So by these splendid recommendations you were ordered to be returned consul, and that, with the man himself. I do not complain about Dolabella, who was then pushed, induced, deluded. In that matter, how great was the bad faith of each of you toward Dolabella, who is ignorant? Caesar induced him to stand, and then turned aside what had been promised and accepted, transferring it to himself; you put your own consent to his bad faith. The Kalends of January come; we are gathered into the Senate: Dolabella inveighed against him much more copiously and more elaborately than I do now.
his igitur rebus praeclare commendatus iussus es renuntiari consul et quidem cum ipso. nihil queror de Dolabella qui tum est impulsus, inductus, elusus. qua in re quanta fuerit uterque vestrum perfidia in Dolabellam quis ignorat? ille induxit ut peteret, promissum et receptum intervertit ad seque transtulit; tu eius perfidiae voluntatem tuam ascripsisti. veniunt Kalendae Ianuariae; cogimur in senatum: invectus est copiosius multo in istum et paratius Dolabella quam nunc ego.
But what, in his anger, he said, good gods! First, when Caesar had shown that, before he set out, he would order Dolabella to be consul — and they deny him to be a king, who both did always such a thing and said it — but when Caesar had spoken thus, then this good augur said that he had been endowed with such a priesthood that he could either obstruct the elections by the auspices or vitiate them, and asserted that he would do it. In this thing first learn the man’s incredible stupidity.
hic autem iratus quae dixit, di boni! primum cum Caesar ostendisset se, prius quam proficisceretur, Dolabellam consulem esse iussurum—quem negant regem, qui et faceret semper eius modi aliquid et diceret—sed cum Caesar ita dixisset, tum hic bonus augur eo se sacerdotio praeditum esse dixit ut comitia auspiciis vel impedire vel vitiare posset, idque se facturum esse adseveravit. in quo primum incredibilem stupiditatem hominis cognoscite.
What then? That which you said you could do by the right of your priesthood, could you have done any less, if you had not been augur but had been consul? Look out — perhaps you could have done it even more easily. For we have only the right of declaration; consuls and the other magistrates have also the right of observation. Granted: this is incompetence, for prudence is not to be demanded of a man who is never sober; but mark his impudence. Many months before, in the Senate, he said he would either obstruct Dolabella’s elections by the auspices, or do what he did. Can anyone foretell what flaw there is going to be in the auspices, unless he has resolved to watch the heavens? Which neither is permissible during the holding of the comitia by the laws, and if anyone has watched, he ought to announce it not when the comitia have been held but before they are held. But his impudence is entangled with his ignorance: he neither knows what becomes an augur, nor does he do what becomes a man of shame.
quid enim? istud quod te sacerdoti iure facere posse dixisti, si augur non esses et consul esses, minus facere potuisses? vide ne etiam facilius. nos enim nuntiationem solum habemus, consules et reliqui magistratus etiam spectionem. esto: hoc imperite; nec enim est ab homine numquam sobrio postulanda prudentia, sed videte impudentiam. multis ante mensibus in senatu dixit se Dolabellae comitia aut prohibiturum auspiciis aut id facturum esse quod fecit. quisquamne divinare potest quid viti in auspiciis futurum sit, nisi qui de caelo servare constituit? quod neque licet comitiis per leges et si qui servavit non comitiis habitis, sed prius quam habeantur, debet nuntiare. verum implicata inscientia impudentia est: nec scit quod augurem nec facit quod pudentem decet.
And recall his consulship from that day down to the Ides of March. What attendant was ever so abject, so low? He himself was good for nothing; he asked for everything; thrusting his head into the back of his colleague’s litter, he begged from his colleague the favours he was peddling. Behold the day of Dolabella’s comitia. The sorting of the prerogative century: he keeps quiet. It is announced: he says nothing. The first class is called, then, as is the custom, votes; then the second class — all of which was done quicker than I have said it.
atque ex illo die recordamini eius usque ad Idus Martias consulatum. quis umquam apparitor tam humilis, tam abiectus? nihil ipse poterat; omnia rogabat; caput in aversam lecticam inserens, beneficia quae venderet a conlega petebat. ecce Dolabellae comitiorum dies. sortitio praerogativae; quiescit. renuntiatur: tacet. prima classis vocatur, deinde ita ut adsolet suffragia, tum secunda classis, quae omnia sunt citius facta quam dixi.
The business concluded, the good augur — you would have said it was Gaius Laelius — says: “On another day.” O singular impudence! What had you seen, what had you perceived, what had you heard? For neither did you say that you had been watching the heavens, nor do you say so today. That flaw, then, occurred which you had foreseen even on the Kalends of January, and had foretold so far in advance. So, by Hercules, with great damage — I hope — rather to yourself than to the commonwealth, you have invented auspices; you have entangled the Roman people in religious obligation; you, augur to augur, you, consul to consul, made your evil announcement. I will say no more, lest I seem to overturn the acts of Dolabella, which must one day be referred to our college. But mark the man’s arrogance and insolence.
confecto negotio bonus augur—C. Laelium diceres—’Alio die’ inquit. O impudentiam singularem! quid videras, quid senseras, quid audieras? neque enim te de caelo servasse dixisti nec hodie dicis. id igitur obvenit vitium quod tu iam Kalendis Ianuariis futurum esse provideras et tanto ante praedixeras. ergo hercule magna, ut spero, tua potius quam rei publicae calamitate ementitus es auspicia; obstrinxisti religione populum Romanum; augur auguri, consul consuli obnuntiasti. nolo plura, ne acta Dolabellae videar convellere, quae necesse est aliquando ad nostrum conlegium deferantur. sed adrogantiam hominis insolentiamque cognoscite.
As long as you wish, Dolabella is a flawed consul; again, when you wish, he was created with the auspices intact. If there is no force in those words by which an augur announces his decision, as you announced, confess that, when you said “On another day,” you were not sober; but if there is some force in those words, I ask the augur from his colleague what that force is. But that, from the many achievements of Marcus Antonius, my speech may not happen to leap past one of singular beauty, let us come to the Lupercalia. He does not dissemble, senators: it is plain that he is shaken; he sweats, he turns pale. Let him do what he will, only let him not turn sick — as he did in the Porch of Minucia. What defence can there be of such great disgracefulness? I am eager to hear, that I may see where the great fee of the rhetorician shows itself, where the field of Leontini appears.
quam diu tu voles, vitiosus consul Dolabella; rursus, cum voles, salvis auspiciis creatus. si nihil est, cum augur eis verbis nuntiat, quibus tu nuntiasti, confitere te, cum ‘Alio die’ dixeris, sobrium non fuisse; sin est aliqua vis in istis verbis, ea quae sit augur a conlega requiro. sed ne forte ex multis rebus gestis M. Antoni rem unam pulcherrimam transiliat oratio, ad Lupercalia veniamus. non dissimulat, patres conscripti: apparet esse commotum; sudat, pallet. Quidlibet, modo ne nauseet, faciat quod in porticu Minucia fecit. quae potest esse turpitudinis tantae defensio? cupio audire, ut videam ubi rhetoris sit tanta merces, ubi campus Leontinus appareat.
Your colleague was sitting on the Rostra, wrapped in a purple toga, on a golden chair, crowned. You go up, you approach the chair — so you were a Lupercus that you ought to have remembered you were a consul — you display a diadem. A groan throughout the Forum. Where did the diadem come from? You had not picked one up that had been thrown down; you had brought it from home, a crime premeditated and considered. You were placing the diadem upon him to the lamentation of the people; he was rejecting it to their applause. You, therefore, you alone, criminal, were found, who, while you were the author of monarchy and would have him whom you had as colleague for your master, were trying at the same moment what the Roman people could bear and endure.
sedebat in rostris conlega tuus amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus. escendis, accedis ad sellam—ita eras Lupercus ut te consulem esse meminisse deberes—diadema ostendis. gemitus toto foro. Vnde diadema? non enim abiectum sustuleras, sed attuleras domo meditatum et cogitatum scelus. tu diadema imponebas cum plangore populi; ille cum plausu reiciebat. tu ergo unus, scelerate, inventus es qui cum auctor regni esses, eumque quem conlegam habebas dominum habere velles, idem temptares quid populus Romanus ferre et pati posset.
Nay, even you were trying to win pity: a suppliant you threw yourself at his feet. Asking what? To be a slave? You should have asked it for yourself alone, who from boyhood had so lived as to endure everything, that you would readily be a slave; from us and from the Roman people you certainly had no such commission. O that splendid eloquence of yours, when you spoke in a public meeting naked! What more shameful than this, what more foul, what more worthy of every punishment? Are you waiting for us to goad you with the spur? This, if you have any part of feeling, lacerates you; this speech draws blood. I am afraid I may diminish the glory of the highest men; yet I shall speak, moved by indignation. What is more unworthy than that he should live who placed the diadem, when all confess that he was justly killed who rejected it?
at etiam misericordiam captabas: supplex te ad pedes abiciebas. quid petens? ut servires? tibi uni peteres qui ita a puero vixeras ut omnia paterere, ut facile servires; a nobis populoque Romano mandatum id certe non habebas. O praeclaram illam eloquentiam tuam, cum es nudus contionatus! quid hoc turpius, quid foedius, quid suppliciis omnibus dignius? num exspectas dum te stimulis fodiamus? haec te, si ullam partem habes sensus, lacerat, haec cruentat oratio. vereor ne imminuam summorum virorum gloriam; dicam tamen dolore commotus. quid indignius quam vivere eum qui imposuerit diadema, cum omnes fateantur iure interfectum esse qui abiecerit?
He even had it set down in the calendar at the Lupercalia: “To Gaius Caesar, dictator perpetual, Marcus Antonius the consul by command of the people offered the kingship; Caesar refused.” I now scarcely wonder you disturb the peace; that you hate not only the city but even the daylight; that with the most desperate brigands you drink not only from day to day but from one day into the next. For where can you find rest in peace? What place can there be for you in the laws, in the courts, which, so far as in you lay, you abolished by your kingly domination? Was Lucius Tarquinius therefore driven out, Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius, Marcus Manlius slain, that many ages after, a king at Rome should be set up by Marcus Antonius, which is impious?
at etiam ascribi iussit in fastis ad Lupercalia: C. Caesari, dictatori perpetuo, M. Antonium consulem populi iussu regnum detulisse; Caesarem uti noluisse. iam iam minime miror te otium perturbare; non modo urbem odisse sed etiam lucem; cum perditissimis latronibus non solum de die sed etiam in diem bibere. Vbi enim tu in pace consistes? qui locus tibi in legibus et in iudiciis esse potest, quae tu, quantum in te fuit, dominatu regio sustulisti? ideone L. Tarquinius exactus, Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius, M. Manlius necati ut multis post saeculis a M. Antonio, quod fas non est, rex Romae constitueretur?
But let us go back to the auspices, of which Caesar was going to treat in the Senate on the Ides of March. I ask: what would you then have done? I had heard, indeed, that you had come prepared, because you thought I was going to speak about your fabricated auspices, which yet had to be obeyed. The fortune of the commonwealth took away that day. Did the death of Caesar take away also your judgment about the auspices? But I have come upon the time which must take precedence of the matters on which my speech had entered. What flight of yours, what panic on that glorious day, what despair of life from consciousness of your crimes, when from that flight, by the kindness of those who wished you safe, if you should be sane, you stole home in secret!
sed ad auspicia redeamus, de quibus Idibus Martiis fuit in senatu Caesar acturus. quaero: tum tu quid egisses? audiebam equidem te paratum venisse, quod me de ementitis auspiciis, quibus tamen parere necesse erat, putares esse dicturum. sustulit illum diem fortuna rei publicae. num etiam tuum de auspiciis iudicium interitus Caesaris sustulit? sed incidi in id tempus quod eis rebus in quas ingressa erat oratio praevertendum est. quae tua fuga, quae formido praeclaro illo die, quae propter conscientiam scelerum desperatio vitae, cum ex illa fuga beneficio eorum qui te, si sanus esses, salvum esse voluerunt, clam te domum recepisti!
O my auguries of things to come, ever in vain most true! I told those liberators of ours on the Capitol, when they wished me to go to you to urge you to defend the commonwealth, that, as long as you feared, you would promise all things; as soon as you ceased to fear, you would be like yourself. So while the rest of the consulars went and came, I held to my judgment: I neither saw you that day nor the next, nor did I believe that any alliance of best citizens with a most savage enemy could be confirmed by any covenant. On the third day I came to the temple of Tellus, and that against my will, since all the approaches were beset by armed men.
O mea frustra semper verissima auguria rerum futurarum! dicebam illis in Capitolio liberatoribus nostris, cum me ad te ire vellent, ut ad defendendam rem publicam te adhortarer, quoad metueres, omnia te promissurum; simul ac timere desisses, similem te futurum tui. itaque cum ceteri consulares irent, redirent, in sententia mansi: neque te illo die neque postero vidi neque ullam societatem optimis civibus cum importunissimo hoste foedere ullo confirmari posse credidi. post diem tertium veni in aedem telluris et quidem invitus, cum omnis aditus armati obsiderent.
What a day was that for you, Antony? Although you have suddenly stood forth as my enemy, yet I pity you, because you have envied yourself. What a man you would have been, immortal gods, and how great, if you had been able to keep the mind of that day! We should have peace, which had been made through a noble boy as hostage, the grandson of Marcus Bambalio. Although fear was making you good — not a lasting teacher of duty — audacity, which never leaves you when fear is absent, made you wicked. And yet, then, when men thought you most excellent — I dissenting — you most criminally took charge of the funeral of the tyrant, if that was a funeral.
qui tibi dies ille, Antoni, fuit? quamquam mihi inimicus subito exstitisti, tamen me tui miseret quod tibi invideris. qui tu vir, di immortales, et quantus fuisses, si illius diei mentem servare potuisses! pacem haberemus, quae erat facta per obsidem puerum nobilem, M. Bambalionis nepotem. quamquam bonum te timor faciebat, non diuturnus magister offici, improbum fecit ea quae, dum timor abest, a te non discedit, audacia. etsi tum, cum optimum te putabant me quidem dissentiente, funeri tyranni, si illud funus fuit, sceleratissime praefuisti.
That fine eulogy was yours, that lamentation, that exhortation; you, you, I say, lit those torches, both those with which he was half-burned and those with which the house of Lucius Bellienus was burned to the ground. You let loose upon our houses those onsets of desperate men, and largely of slaves, which we ourselves drove back with force and hand. Yet the same man, as if the soot were wiped off, on the following days passed in the Capitol splendid decrees of the Senate, that no tablet of immunity or of any privilege should be posted after the Ides of March. You yourself remember what you said about exiles, you know what you said about immunity. The best thing of all was that you abolished the name of the dictatorship from the commonwealth in perpetuity: by which act you seemed to have conceived so great a hatred of kingship that you were taking away all fear of it on account of the late dictator. To others the commonwealth seemed constituted,
tua illa pulchra laudatio, tua miseratio, tua cohortatio; tu, tu, inquam, illas faces incendisti, et eas quibus semustilatus ille est et eas quibus incensa L. Bellieni domus deflagravit. tu illos impetus perditorum hominum et ex maxima parte servorum quos nos vi manuque reppulimus in nostras domos immisisti. idem tamen quasi fuligine abstersa reliquis diebus in Capitolio praeclara senatus consulta fecisti, ne qua post Idus Martias immunitatis tabula neve cuius benefici figeretur. meministi ipse de exsulibus, scis de immunitate quid dixeris. optimum vero quod dictaturae nomen in perpetuum de re publica sustulisti: quo quidem facto tantum te cepisse odium regni videbatur ut eius omnem propter proximum dictatorem metum tolleres. constituta res publica videbatur aliis,
but to me by no means, who, with you at the helm, feared every kind of shipwreck. Have I, then, been deceived? Or could he longer remain unlike himself? Before your very eyes throughout the whole Capitol tablets were being posted, and not only were immunities sold to individuals, but to whole peoples: citizenship was granted no longer one by one, but to whole provinces. Therefore, if these things stand which cannot stand while the commonwealth stands, you have lost, senators, whole provinces; and not the revenues only but the empire too of the Roman people has been diminished by this domestic huckstering.
mihi vero nullo modo, qui omnia te gubernante naufragia metuebam. num igitur me fefellit, aut num diutius sui potuit esse dissimilis? inspectantibus vobis toto Capitolio tabulae figebantur, neque solum singulis venibant immunitates sed etiam populis universis: civitas non iam singillatim, sed provinciis totis dabatur. itaque si haec manent quae stante re publica manere non possunt, provincias universas, patres conscripti, perdidistis, neque vectigalia solum sed etiam imperium populi Romani huius domesticis nundinis deminutum est.
Where is the seven hundred million which is on the tablets at the temple of Ops? Money indeed of ill omen, but yet money which, if it were not paid back to those whose it was, might rescue us from tributes. How is it that, of the forty million sesterces which you owed on the Ides of March, you had ceased to owe them before the Kalends of April? There are indeed countless things bought of your people not without your knowledge; but one outstanding decree, posted in the Capitol, concerning King Deiotarus, most loyal friend of the Roman people: which when it was set forth, there was no one who in his very pain could keep from laughing.
Vbi est septiens miliens quod est in tabulis quae sunt ad Opis? funestae illius quidem pecuniae, sed tamen quae nos, si eis quorum erat non redderetur, a tributis posset vindicare. tu autem quadringentiens sestertium quod Idibus Martiis debuisti quonam modo ante Kalendas Aprilis debere desisti? sunt ea quidem innumerabilia quae a tuis emebantur non insciente te, sed unum egregium de rege Deiotaro, populi Romani amicissimo, decretum in Capitolio fixum: quo proposito nemo erat qui in ipso dolore risum posset continere.
For who was ever a greater enemy to anyone than Caesar to Deiotarus? As much so as to this order, to the equestrian, to the Massiliotes, to all whom he perceived to hold the commonwealth of the Roman people dear. From a man, then, from whom living, neither present nor absent, King Deiotarus had ever obtained any just or generous thing, he became, when dead, well-favoured. Caesar had reproached his guest to his face, had reckoned up his money, had placed in his tetrarchy one of his Greek companions, had taken away Armenia which the Senate had given him. These things he stripped away while living, he returns when dead.
quis enim cuiquam inimicior quam Deiotaro Caesar? aeque atque huic ordini, ut equestri, ut Massiliensibus, ut omnibus quibus rem publicam populi Romani caram esse sentiebat. igitur a quo vivo nec praesens nec absens rex Deiotarus quicquam aequi boni impetravit, apud mortuum factus est gratiosus. compellarat hospitem praesens, computarat pecuniam, in eius tetrarchia unum ex Graecis comitibus suis conlocarat, Armeniam abstulerat a senatu datam. haec vivus eripuit, reddit mortuus.
But in what terms! Now it seemed to him just, now not unfair. Wonderful complication of words! But Deiotarus never — for I was always present for him in his absence — said that anything we asked for him seemed just to himself. A bond for ten million sesterces was made by his envoys, good men but timid and inexperienced, without our advice, without the advice of the king’s other guest-friends, in the women’s quarters — the place in which many things have been and are sold. With regard to this bond, you had better, I think, consider what you are to do; for the king himself of his own accord, with no record of Caesar’s, as soon as he heard of Caesar’s death, recovered his property by his own war.
at quibus verbis? modo aequum sibi videri, modo non iniquum. mira verborum complexio! at ille numquam—semper enim absenti adfui Deiotaro— quicquam sibi quod nos pro illo postularemus aequum dixit videri. syngrapha sesterti centiens per legatos, viros bonos, sed timidos et imperitos, sine nostra, sine reliquorum hospitum regis sententia facta in gynaecio est, quo in loco plurimae res venierunt et veneunt. qua ex syngrapha quid sis acturus meditere censeo: rex enim ipse sua sponte, nullis commentariis Caesaris, simul atque audivit eius interitum, suo Marte res suas recuperavit.
The wise man knew it had always been law that what tyrants had snatched away, when the tyrants were killed, those from whom it had been snatched should recover. No jurist, then, not even that one who is the sole jurist for you, through whom you do these things, will say that anything is owed under that bond for things that had been recovered before the bond. For he did not buy them from you, but possessed them himself before you sold to him what was his. He was a man. We, indeed, are to be despised, who hate the author and defend the acts.
sciebat homo sapiens ius semper hoc fuisse ut, quae tyranni eripuissent, ea tyrannis interfectis ei quibus erepta essent recuperarent. nemo igitur iure consultus, ne iste quidem, qui tibi uni est iure consultus, per quem haec agis, ex ista syngrapha deberi dicet pro eis rebus quae erant ante syngrapham recuperatae. non enim a te emit, sed prius quam tu suum sibi venderes ipse possedit. ille vir fuit; nos quidem contemnendi qui auctorem odimus, acta defendimus.
What shall I say of the countless memoranda, what of the innumerable handwritten orders? Of these even retailers are at work, who hawk them in public like gladiators’ bills. And so such heaps of money are heaped up in his house that the money is now being weighed, not counted. But how blind is greed! Lately a tablet was posted by which the wealthiest cities of the Cretans are freed from tribute, and it is decreed that after Marcus Brutus’s proconsulship Crete shall not be a province. Are you in possession of your mind? Are you not to be put in chains? Could Crete be freed by Caesar’s decree after the departure of Marcus Brutus, when Crete had no connection with Brutus while Caesar was alive? But by the sale of this decree — lest you think nothing was done — you have lost the province of Crete. Altogether no man was the buyer of anything who lacked this seller.
quid ego de commentariis infinitis, quid de innumerabilibus chirographis loquar? quorum etiam institores sunt qui ea tamquam gladiatorum libellos palam venditent. itaque tanti acervi nummorum apud istum construuntur ut iam expendantur, non numerentur pecuniae. at quam caeca avaritia est! nuper fixa tabula est qua civitates locupletissimae Cretensium vectigalibus liberantur, statuiturque ne post M. Brutum pro consule sit Creta provincia. tu mentis compos, tu non constringendus? an Caesaris decreto Creta post M. Bruti decessum potuit liberari, cum Creta nihil ad Brutum Caesare vivo pertineret? at huius venditione decreti—ne nihil actum putetis—provinciam Cretam perdidistis. omnino nemo ullius rei fuit emptor cui defuerit hic venditor.
And as for the law about exiles which you posted, did Caesar pass it? I attack no man’s calamity: only I complain, first, that the returns of those whose case Caesar judged dissimilar have been polluted; next, I do not see why you do not grant the same to the rest, for not more than three or four are left. Those who are in a similar calamity, why do they not enjoy a similar mercy of yours, why do you hold them in the position of your uncle? Concerning him you were unwilling to bring forward a bill when you brought it for the rest: yet you even drove him to seek the censorship, and engineered a candidacy that aroused both the laughter and the complaints of men. But why did you not hold those elections?
et de exsulibus legem quam fixisti Caesar tulit? nullius insector calamitatem: tantum queror, primum eorum reditus inquinatos quorum causam Caesar dissimilem iudicarit; deinde nescio cur non reliquis idem tribuas: neque enim plus quam tres aut quattuor reliqui sunt. qui simili in calamitate sunt, cur tua misericordia non simili fruuntur, cur eos habes in loco patrui? de quo ferre, cum de reliquis ferres, noluisti: quem etiam ad censuram petendam impulisti, eamque petitionem comparasti quae et risus hominum et querelas moveret. cur autem ea comitia non habuisti?
Was it because a tribune of the plebs reported a sinister thunderbolt? When your interest is at stake, there are no auspices; when your relatives’, then you become scrupulous. What? Did you not also let him down in the office of one of the Seven? For there came in your way one whom you feared, I suppose, lest you should be unable, with your head intact, to refuse him. You loaded with every insult the man whom, in your father’s place, if there were any natural piety in you, you ought to have honoured. You cast off his daughter, your own kinswoman, after seeking out and previously inspecting another match. That was not enough: you charged a most chaste woman with shameful conduct. What can be added to that? Not content with that, in a most crowded Senate on the Kalends of January, with the uncle himself sitting there, you dared to say that your cause of hatred with Dolabella was that you had discovered he had committed adultery with your sister and wife. Who can interpret whether you were more impudent in saying it in the Senate, or more depraved in saying it against Dolabella, or fouler in saying it before her father’s hearing, or more cruel against that wretched woman in speaking so filthily, so impiously.
an quia tribunus plebis sinistrum fulmen nuntiabat? cum tua quid interest, nulla auspicia sunt; cum tuorum, tum fis religiosus. quid? eundem in vii viratu nonne destituisti? intervenit enim cui metuisti, credo, ne salvo capite negare non posses. omnibus eum contumeliis onerasti quem patris loco, si ulla in te pietas esset, colere debebas. filiam eius, sororem tuam, eiecisti, alia condicione quaesita et ante perspecta. non est satis: probri insimulasti pudicissimam feminam. quid est quod addi possit? contentus eo non fuisti: frequentissimo senatu Kalendis Ianuariis sedente patruo hanc tibi esse cum Dolabella causam odi dicere ausus es quod ab eo sorori et uxori tuae stuprum esse oblatum comperisses. quis interpretari potest, impudentiorne qui in senatu, an improbior qui in Dolabellam, an impurior qui patre audiente, an crudelior qui in illam miseram tam spurce, tam impie dixeris.
But let us go back to the handwritten orders. What hearing was given by you? For Caesar’s acts were confirmed by the Senate for the sake of peace: namely, what Caesar had done, not what Antony said Caesar had done. Whence do these things break out? On whose authority are they produced? If they are false, why are they approved? If they are true, why are they sold? But the resolution had been that from the Kalends of June, you, with a council, would examine Caesar’s acts. What council was there? Whom did you ever convoke? What Kalends of June did you wait for? Or those to which you returned, after traversing the colonies of the veterans, hedged about with arms? O that famous tour of yours in April and May, when you even tried to settle Capua as a colony! How you left there, or rather almost did not leave, we know.
sed ad chirographa redeamus. quae tua fuit cognitio? Acta enim Caesaris pacis causa confirmata sunt a senatu: quae quidem Caesar egisset, non ea quae egisse Caesarem dixisset Antonius. Vnde ista erumpunt, quo auctore proferuntur? si sunt falsa, cur probantur? si vera, cur veneunt? at sic placuerat ut ex Kalendis Iuniis de Caesaris actis cum consilio cognosceretis. quod fuit consilium, quem umquam convocasti, quas Kalendas Iunias exspectasti? an eas ad quas te peragratis veteranorum coloniis stipatum armis rettulisti? O praeclaram illam percursationem tuam mense Aprili atque Maio, tum cum etiam Capuam coloniam deducere conatus es! quem ad modum illinc abieris vel potius paene non abieris scimus.
The city you threaten. Make the attempt, that at last that “almost” may be removed! But how distinguished is that journey of yours! What shall I say of the preparation of luncheons, of your frenzied wine-bibbing? These are your losses; those losses are ours: the Campanian land, which, when it was being taken from the revenues to be given to soldiers, we still thought a great wound was being inflicted on the commonwealth — this you were dividing up among your fellow-revellers and fellow-gamblers. Male mimes I mean and female mimes, senators, settled on the Campanian land. Why do I now complain about the Leontine field? Since once both these ploughlands, the Campanian and the Leontine, were reckoned among the patrimony of the Roman people as fruitful and productive. To his doctor three thousand acres: what, if he had cured you? To a rhetorician two thousand: what, if he could have made you eloquent?
cui tu urbi minitaris. Vtinam conere, ut aliquando illud ‘paene’ tollatur! at quam nobilis est tua illa peregrinatio! quid prandiorum apparatus, quid furiosam vinolentiam tuam proferam? tua ista detrimenta sunt, illa nostra: agrum Campanum, qui cum de vectigalibus eximebatur ut militibus daretur, tamen infligi magnum rei publicae volnus putabamus, hunc tu compransoribus tuis et conlusoribus dividebas. mimos dico et mimas, patres conscripti, in agro Campano conlocatos. quid iam querar de agro Leontino? quoniam quidem hae quondam arationes Campana et Leontina in populi Romani patrimonio grandiferae et fructuosae ferebantur. Medico tria milia iugerum: quid, si te sanasset? rhetori duo: quid, si te disertum facere potuisset.
But let us go back to the journey and to Italy. You led a colony to Casilinum, where Caesar had earlier led one. You consulted me by letter about Capua, you yourself indeed, though I should have given the same reply about Casilinum: whether you could rightly lead a new colony where a colony already existed. I replied that into a colony which had been led with auspices, while it was still intact, no new colony could rightly be led; but that new colonists could be enrolled, I wrote. But you, lifted up by your insolence, overturning all the auspicial law, led a colony to Casilinum, where one had been led a few years before, that you might raise the standard, that you might drive round the plough; with whose share you almost grazed the gate of Capua, that the territory of a flourishing colony might be diminished.
sed ad iter Italiamque redeamus. deduxisti coloniam Casilinum, quo Caesar ante deduxerat. consuluisti me per litteras de Capua tu quidem, sed idem de Casilino respondissem: possesne ubi colonia esset, eo coloniam novam iure deducere. negavi in eam coloniam quae esset auspicato deducta, dum esset incolumis, coloniam novam iure deduci: colonos novos ascribi posse rescripsi. tu autem insolentia elatus omni auspiciorum iure turbato Casilinum coloniam deduxisti, quo erat paucis annis ante deducta, ut vexillum tolleres, ut aratrum circumduceres; cuius quidem vomere portam Capuae paene perstrinxisti, ut florentis coloniae territorium minueretur.
From this disturbance of religious things you fly to the estate of Marcus Varro, that most chaste and most upright man, at Casinum. By what right, with what face? “By the same,” you will say, “as that by which I came to the estates of the heirs of Lucius Rubrius, of the heirs of Lucius Turselius, to my other countless possessions.” And if it is from the auction-spear, let the spear stand, let the records stand, only Caesar’s, not yours — by which you owed, not by which you discharged yourself. Of Varro’s estate at Casinum, who says it was sold, who saw the spear of that sale, who heard the auctioneer’s voice? You say you sent a man to Alexandria to buy it from Caesar; for to wait for the man himself was too much. But who ever heard — and no man’s safety was a care to more — that anything was withdrawn from the fortunes of Varro? What? If Caesar even wrote to you to return it, what can adequately be said of so great a shamelessness? Take away those swords for a little while which we see: you will at once understand that one thing is the cause of Caesar’s spear, another the cause of your own boldness and rashness. For not only the owner, but any friend, neighbour, host, agent will keep you out of those quarters. But how many days in that country house have you been most foully reveling! From the third hour the drinking, the playing, the vomiting went on. O the wretched walls themselves — “by how unlike a master —” although how is this fellow a master? — yet by how unlike were they held! Marcus Varro wished it as the retreat of his studies, not of his lusts.
ab hac perturbatione religionum advolas in M. Varronis, sanctissimi atque integerrimi viri, fundum Casinatem. quo iure, quo ore? ‘ eodem,’ inquies ‘quo in heredum L. Rubri, quo in heredum L. Turseli praedia, quo in reliquas innumerabilis possessiones.’ et si ab hasta, valeat hasta, valeant tabulae, modo Caesaris, non tuae, quibus debuisti, non quibus tu te liberavisti. Varronis quidem Casinatem fundum quis venisse dicit, quis hastam istius venditionis vidit, quis vocem praeconis audivit? misisse te dicis Alexandream qui emeret a Caesare; ipsum enim exspectare magnum fuit.
What things in that villa used formerly to be discussed, what considered, what committed to letters! The rights of the Roman people, the records of our ancestors, every method of wisdom and every method of learning. But with you as occupant — not as master — all the place echoed with the voices of drunkards, the pavements swam with wine, the walls were soaked, freeborn boys mingled with the boys for hire, harlots among matrons. Men came to pay their respects from Casinum, from Aquinum, from Interamna: not one was admitted. Quite rightly: for in a man so utterly base the marks of distinction were being made cheap.
quis vero audivit umquam—nullius autem salus curae pluribus fuit— de fortunis Varronis rem ullam esse detractam? quid? si etiam scripsit ad te Caesar ut redderes, quid satis potest dici de tanta impudentia? Remove gladios parumper illos quos videmus: iam intelleges aliam causam esse hastae Caesaris, aliam confidentiae et temeritatis tuae. non enim te dominus modo illis sedibus sed quivis amicus, vicinus, hospes, procurator arcebit. at quam multos dies in ea villa turpissime es perbacchatus! ab hora tertia bibebatur, ludebatur, vomebatur. O tecta ipsa misera, ‘quam dispari domino’—quamquam quo modo iste dominus—sed tamen quam ab dispari tenebantur! studiorum enim suorum M. Varro voluit illud, non libidinum deversorium.
When, setting out from there for Rome, he was approaching Aquinum, there came out to meet him, as is usual in a populous country town, a sizeable crowd. But this fellow was carried through the town in a closed litter as if he were dead. Foolish people of Aquinum: but at any rate they lived on the road. What of the people of Anagnia? They, though off the road, came down to greet him as if he were consul. It is incredible to say, but among all it was settled that no one was greeted in return, especially when he had two men of Anagnia with him, Mustela and Laco, of whom the first is chief of his swords, the other of his cups.
quae in illa villa antea dicebantur, quae cogitabantur, quae litteris mandabantur! iura populi Romani, monumenta maiorum, omnis sapientiae ratio omnisque doctrinae. at vero te inquilino —non enim domino—personabant omnia vocibus ebriorum, natabant pavimenta vino, madebant parietes, ingenui pueri cum meritoriis, scorta inter matres familias versabantur. Casino salutatum veniebant, Aquino, Interamna: admissus est nemo. iure id quidem; in homine enim turpissimo obsolefiebant dignitatis insignia.
Why should I recall those threats and insults with which he inveighed against the Sidicines, harassed the people of Puteoli, because they had adopted Gaius Cassius and the Bruti as patrons? With great enthusiasm, judgment, goodwill, affection, not, like you and Basilus, by force and arms, nor like others of your sort, whose clients no one would wish to be, much less to be their client. Meanwhile, while you are absent, what a day was that of your colleague’s, when he overthrew that tomb in the Forum which you were accustomed to revere? When the news was brought to you, as those who were there with you agreed, you collapsed. What happened next I do not know — fear, I believe, prevailed, and arms — you indeed dragged your colleague down from heaven and brought it about not, indeed, that he should be like you, but at least that he should be unlike himself.
cum inde Romam proficiscens ad Aquinum accederet, obviam ei processit, ut est frequens municipium, magna sane multitudo. at iste operta lectica latus per oppidum est ut mortuus. stulte Aquinates: sed tamen in via habitabant. quid Anagnini? qui, cum essent devii, descenderunt ut istum, tamquam si esset consul, salutarent. incredibile dictu, sed inter omnis constabat neminem esse resalutatum, praesertim cum duos secum Anagninos haberet, mustelam et Laconem, quorum alter gladiorum est princeps, alter poculorum.
But what a return after this to Rome, what a disturbance throughout the whole city! We remembered Cinna at the height of his power, Sulla afterwards in his domination, and lately Caesar in his reign. Perhaps there had been swords then, but concealed, and not so many. But your barbarism — what is it, how vast? They follow in a hollow square with their swords; we see litters borne by shield-bearers. And to these things now, senators, become familiar, we have grown calloused by custom. On the Kalends of June, when, as had been determined, we wished to come into the Senate, struck with terror we suddenly scattered.
quid ego illas istius minas contumeliasque commemorem quibus invectus est in Sidicinos, vexavit Puteolanos, quod C. Cassium et Brutos patronos adoptassent? Magno quidem studio, iudicio, benevolentia, caritate, non, ut te et Basilum, vi et armis, et alios vestri similis quos clientis nemo habere velit, non modo illorum cliens esse. interea dum tu abes, qui dies ille conlegae tui fuit, cum illud quod venerari solebas bustum in foro evertit? qua re tibi nuntiata, ut constabat inter eos qui una fuerunt concidisti. quid evenerit postea nescio—metum credo valuisse et arma—conlegam quidem de caelo detraxisti effecistique non tu quidem etiam nunc ut similis tui, sed certe ut dissimilis esset sui.
But this fellow, who did not need a Senate, neither missed anyone and was rather glad at our withdrawal, and at once accomplished those marvellous deeds of his. He who had defended Caesar’s handwritten orders for his own profit, overturned Caesar’s laws — and those most distinguished — that he might shake the commonwealth. He prolonged the years of provincial governments; and the same man, who ought to have been the defender of Caesar’s acts, both in public and private matters rescinded Caesar’s acts. In public matters nothing is graver than law; in private matters most binding is a testament. Some laws he abolished without publication, others he published in order to abolish them. He made void a will, a thing which has always been maintained even for the meanest citizens. The statues, the paintings which Caesar bequeathed to the people together with his gardens, he took, some to Pompey’s gardens, some to Scipio’s villa.
qui vero inde reditus Romam, quae perturbatio totius urbis! memineramus Cinnam nimis potentem, Sullam postea dominantem, modo Caesarem regnantem videramus. erant fortasse gladii, sed absconditi nec ita multi. ista vero quae et quanta barbaria est! agmine quadrato cum gladiis sequuntur; scutorum lecticas portari videmus. atque his quidem iam inveteratis, patres conscripti, consuetudine obduruimus. Kalendis Iuniis cum in senatum, ut erat constitutum, venire vellemus, metu perterriti repente diffugimus.
And you, scrupulous in the memory of Caesar, you love him dead? What greater honour had he attained than to have a sacred couch, an image, a pediment, a flamen? Is Marcus Antonius, then, flamen, as to Jupiter, as to Mars, as to Quirinus, so to the divine Julius? Why then do you delay? Why are you not consecrated? Choose the day, see who is to consecrate you: we are colleagues; no one will refuse. O detestable man, whether because you are priest of a tyrant or because of a dead man! I ask next: do you not know what day it is today? Do you not know that yesterday was the fourth day in the circus of the Roman Games? And that you yourself proposed to the people that a fifth day besides should be assigned to Caesar? Why are we not in the toga praetexta? Why do we suffer the honour granted to Caesar by your own law to be neglected? Or did you let the thanksgivings be polluted by the addition of a day, and refuse the same to the sacred couches? Either remove religion from everything, or preserve it everywhere.
at iste, qui senatu non egeret, neque desideravit quemquam et potius discessu nostro laetatus est statimque illa mirabilia facinora effecit. qui chirographa Caesaris defendisset lucri sui causa, is leges Caesaris easque praeclaras, ut rem publicam concutere posset, evertit. numerum annorum provinciis prorogavit; idemque, cum actorum Caesaris defensor esse deberet, et in publicis et in privatis rebus acta Caesaris rescidit. in publicis nihil est lege gravius; in privatis firmissimum est testamentum. leges alias sine promulgatione sustulit, alias ut tolleret promulgavit. testamentum inritum fecit, quod etiam infimis civibus semper obtentum est. signa, tabulas, quas populo Caesar una cum hortis legavit, eas hic partim in hortos Pompei deportavit, partim in villam Scipionis.
You ask whether the sacred couch pleases me, the pediment, the flamen. None of these things pleases me. But you who defend Caesar’s acts, what can you say to show why you defend some and care nothing for others? Or do you perhaps wish to confess that you measure everything by your own profit, not by his dignity? What then to this? For I look for your eloquence. I have known your grandfather a most eloquent man, but you a still plainer one in speaking. He never spoke in public unclothed: we have seen the breast of you, a simple man. Will you answer to these things, or will you dare to open your mouth at all? Will you find anything in all my long speech which you confidently think you can answer? But let us pass over the past.
et tu in Caesaris memoria diligens, tu illum amas mortuum? quem is honorem maiorem consecutus erat quam ut haberet pulvinar, simulacrum, fastigium, flaminem? est ergo flamen, ut Iovi, ut Marti, ut Quirino, sic divo Iulio M. Antonius? quid igitur cessas? cur non inauguraris? sume diem, vide qui te inauguret: conlegae sumus; nemo negabit. O detestabilem hominem, sive quod tyranni sacerdos es sive quod mortui! quaero deinceps num hodiernus dies qui sit ignores? nescis heri quartum in circo diem ludorum Romanorum fuisse? te autem ipsum ad populum tulisse ut quintus praeterea dies Caesari tribueretur? cur non sumus praetextati? cur honorem Caesaris tua lege datum deseri patimur? an supplicationes addendo diem contaminari passus es, pulvinaria noluisti? aut undique religionem tolle aut usque quaque conserva.
This one day, this one, I say, today, this point of time at which I am speaking, defend, if you can. Why is the Senate hedged in by a ring of armed men, why do your bodyguards hear me with their swords, why are the doors of the temple of Concord not open, why do you bring down into the Forum men of all nations the most barbarous, Ituraeans with arrows? He says he does it for his own protection. Is it not better to perish a thousand times than to be unable to live in one’s own city without an armed guard? But this is no guard, believe me: you must be hedged about by the affection and goodwill of the citizens, not by arms.
quaeris placeatne mihi pulvinar esse, fastigium, flaminem. mihi vero nihil istorum placet: sed tu qui acta Caesaris defendis quid potes dicere cur alia defendas, alia non cures? Nisi forte vis fateri te omnia quaestu tuo, non illius dignitate metiri. quid ad haec tandem? exspecto enim eloquentiam. disertissimum cognovi avum tuum, at te etiam apertiorem in dicendo. ille numquam nudus est contionatus: tuum hominis simplicis pectus vidimus. respondebisne ad haec, aut omnino hiscere audebis? ecquid reperies ex tam longa oratione mea cui te respondere posse confidas? sed praeterita omittamus.
The Roman people will tear these arms from you and wrest them away — I would they may, while we are safe! But however you deal with us, while you use these counsels, you cannot, believe me, last long. For that wife of yours, who is by no means greedy — whom I describe without insult — has owed too long to the Roman people her third instalment. The Roman people has men to whom it may entrust the helm of the commonwealth: wherever in the lands they are, there is all the bulwark of the commonwealth — or rather the commonwealth itself, which thus far has only avenged itself, has not yet recovered itself. The commonwealth indeed surely has young men of the noblest birth ready as its defenders. As much as they wish, let them yield to leisure, considering peace; still they shall be recalled by the commonwealth. And the name of peace is sweet and the thing itself wholesome; but between peace and slavery there is the greatest difference. Peace is tranquil liberty, slavery the last of all evils, to be repelled not only by war but even by death.
hunc unum diem, unum, inquam, hodiernum diem, hoc punctum temporis, quo loquor, defende, si potes. cur armatorum corona senatus saeptus est, cur me tui satellites cum gladiis audiunt, cur valvae Concordiae non patent, cur homines omnium gentium maxime barbaros, Ituraeos, cum sagittis deducis in forum? praesidi sui causa se facere dicit. non igitur miliens perire est melius quam in sua civitate sine armatorum praesidio non posse vivere? sed nullum est istuc, mihi crede, praesidium: caritate te et benevolentia civium saeptum oportet esse, non armis.
But if those liberators of ours have taken themselves from our sight, yet they have left the example of the deed. They did what no one had done. Brutus pursued Tarquin in war, who was then king when one was allowed to be at Rome; Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius, Marcus Manlius were slain on suspicion of seeking the kingship: these first attacked with swords, not one seeking the kingship but one reigning. Which deed, since in itself it is glorious and divine, lies also exposed for imitation, especially since they have won that glory which scarcely seems to be capable of being contained by heaven. For though there was sufficient reward in the very consciousness of a most beautiful deed, yet to a mortal man immortality, I think, is not to be despised.
eripiet et extorquebit tibi ista populus Romanus, utinam salvis nobis! sed quoquo modo nobiscum egeris, dum istis consiliis uteris, non potes, mihi crede, esse diuturnus. etenim ista tua minime avara coniunx quam ego sine contumelia describo nimium diu debet populo Romano tertiam pensionem. habet populus Romanus ad quos gubernacula rei publicae deferat: qui ubicumque terrarum sunt, ibi omne est rei publicae praesidium vel potius ipsa res publica, quae se adhuc tantum modo ulta est, nondum recuperavit. habet quidem certe res publica adulescentis nobilissimos paratos defensores. quam volent illi cedant otio consulentes; tamen a re publica revocabuntur. et nomen pacis dulce est et ipsa res salutaris; sed inter pacem et servitutem plurimum interest. pax est tranquilla libertas, servitus postremum malorum omnium, non modo bello sed morte etiam repellendum.
Recall, then, Marcus Antonius, that day on which you abolished the dictatorship; set before your eyes the joy of the Senate and the Roman people; compare it with this huckstering of yours and of your people: then you will understand how great is the difference between praise and profit. But just as some men through some disease and dullness of the senses do not taste the sweetness of food, so the lustful, the greedy, the criminal have no taste of true praise. But if praise cannot allure you to right action, can not even fear call you back from the foulest deeds? You do not fear the courts: if from innocence, I commend you; but if from violence, do you not understand what is to be feared by him who fears not the courts in that way?
quod si se ipsos illi nostri liberatores e conspectu nostro abstulerunt, at exemplum facti reliquerunt. illi quod nemo fecerat fecerunt. Tarquinium Brutus bello est persecutus, qui tum rex fuit cum esse Romae licebat; Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius, M. Manlius propter suspicionem regni appetendi sunt necati: hi primum cum gladiis non in regnum appetentem, sed in regnantem impetum fecerunt. quod cum ipsum factum per se praeclarum est atque divinum, tum expositum ad imitandum est, praesertim cum illi eam gloriam consecuti sint quae vix caelo capi posse videatur. etsi enim satis in ipsa conscientia pulcherrimi facti fructus erat, tamen mortali immortalitatem non arbitror contemnendam.
But if you do not fear brave men and distinguished citizens, because they are kept from your body by arms, your own people, believe me, will not bear with you long. And what life is it, day and night to fear those of your household? Unless, indeed, you have men bound by greater benefits than that man had certain of those by whom he was killed, or unless you are at all comparable with him. There was in him genius, reason, memory, letters, care, thought, diligence; he had performed deeds in war — disastrous, I admit, to the commonwealth, but yet great; for many years he had meditated reigning, and with great toil and great dangers had brought about what he had thought; he had soothed the unskilled multitude with gifts, monuments, donatives, banquets; his own he had bound by rewards, his adversaries by the show of clemency. In short — he had already brought to a free state, partly by fear, partly by patience, the habit of slavery.
recordare igitur illum, M. Antoni, diem quo dictaturam sustulisti; pone ante oculos laetitiam senatus populique Romani; confer cum hac nundinatione tua tuorumque: tum intelleges quantum inter laudem et lucrum intersit. sed nimirum, ut quidam morbo aliquo et sensus stupore suavitatem cibi non sentiunt, sic libidinosi, avari, facinerosi verae laudis gustatum non habent. sed si te laus adlicere ad recte faciendum non potest, ne metus quidem a foedissimis factis potest avocare? iudicia non metuis: si propter innocentiam, laudo; sin propter vim, non intellegis, qui isto modo iudicia non timeat, ei quid timendum sit?
With him for the lust of mastery I can compare you, but in other respects you are in no way to be likened to him. But of the many evils which were burnt into the commonwealth by him, this much of good there is, that the Roman people has now learnt how much trust to put in each, to whom it should commit itself, of whom it should beware. These things you do not consider, nor do you understand that it is enough for brave men to have learnt how beautiful in the thing, how grateful in the benefit, how glorious in fame, it is to kill a tyrant? Or, when men did not bear with him, will they bear with you?
quod si non metuis viros fortis egregiosque civis, quod a corpore tuo prohibentur armis, tui te, mihi crede, diutius non ferent. quae est autem vita dies et noctes timere a suis? Nisi vero aut maioribus habes beneficiis obligatos quam ille quosdam habuit ex eis a quibus est interfectus, aut tu es ulla re cum eo comparandus. fuit in illo ingenium, ratio, memoria, litterae, cura, cogitatio, diligentia; res bello gesserat, quamvis rei publicae calamitosas, at tamen magnas; multos annos regnare meditatus, magno labore, magnis periculis quod cogitarat effecerat; muneribus, monumentis, congiariis, epulis multitudinem imperitam delenierat; suos praemiis, adversarios clementiae specie devinxerat. quid multa? attulerat iam liberae civitati partim metu partim patientia consuetudinem serviendi.
Hereafter, believe me, men will hasten to this work in rivalry, nor will the slowness of opportunity be waited for. Look back, I beseech, at last on the commonwealth, Marcus Antonius; consider those from whom you sprang, not those with whom you live: with me, as you will: be reconciled with the commonwealth. But concerning yourself, you yourself will judge; concerning myself, I will myself declare. I defended the commonwealth as a young man, I shall not desert it as an old man: I despised the swords of Catiline, I shall not be afraid of yours. Nay, I would willingly even offer my body, if the liberty of the citizens can be redeemed at once by my death, so that the indignation of the Roman people may at last bring forth what it has long been in labour with!
cum illo ego te dominandi cupiditate conferre possum, ceteris vero rebus nullo modo comparandus es. sed ex plurimis malis quae ab illo rei publicae sunt inusta hoc tamen boni est quod didicit iam populus Romanus quantum cuique crederet, quibus se committeret, a quibus caveret. haec non cogitas, neque intellegis satis esse viris fortibus didicisse quam sit re pulchrum, beneficio gratum, fama gloriosum tyrannum occidere? an, cum illum homines non tulerint, te ferent?
For if nearly twenty years ago in this very temple I declared that death could not come untimely to a consular, how much more truly shall I now declare it cannot come so to an old man! For me indeed, senators, death is now even to be wished for, my work in those things which I obtained and which I performed being done. Only these two things I pray: one, that dying I may leave the Roman people free — nothing greater than this can be granted me by the immortal gods — the other, that to each man it may turn out as he deserves of the commonwealth.
certatim posthac, mihi crede, ad hoc opus curretur neque occasionis tarditas exspectabitur. respice, quaeso, aliquando rem publicam, M. Antoni, quibus ortus sis, non quibuscum vivas considera: mecum, ut voles: redi cum re publica in gratiam. sed de te tu videris; ego de me ipse profitebor. defendi rem publicam adulescens, non deseram senex: contempsi Catilinae gladios, non pertimescam tuos. quin etiam corpus libenter obtulerim, si repraesentari morte mea libertas civitatis potest, ut aliquando dolor populi Romani pariat quod iam diu parturit! etenim si abhinc annos prope viginti hoc ipso in templo negavi posse mortem immaturam esse consulari, quanto verius nunc negabo seni? mihi vero, patres conscripti, iam etiam optanda mors est, perfuncto rebus eis quas adeptus sum quasque gessi. duo modo haec opto, unum ut moriens populum Romanum liberum relinquam—hoc mihi maius ab dis immortalibus dari nihil potest—alterum ut ita cuique eveniat ut de re publica quisque mereatur.