Although I fear, gentlemen, that it may be shameful to begin in fear when I speak on behalf of the bravest of men, and most unseemly that — when T. Annius himself is troubled more for the safety of the commonwealth than for his own — I should be unable to bring to his cause an equal greatness of spirit, still the strange aspect of this strange court alarms my eyes, which, wherever they fall, look in vain for the old custom of the Forum and the former usage of the courts. For your assembly is not ringed about with a circle of bystanders, as it used to be; we are not hedged in by the accustomed throng;

etsi vereor, iudices, ne turpe sit pro fortissimo viro dicere incipientem timere minimeque deceat, cum T. Annius ipse magis de rei publicae salute quam de sua perturbetur, me ad eius causam parem animi magnitudinem adferre non posse, tamen haec novi iudici nova forma terret oculos qui, quocumque inciderunt, veterem consuetudinem fori et pristinum morem iudiciorum requirunt. non enim corona consessus vester cinctus est, ut solebat; non usitata frequentia stipati sumus;

and those guards which you see stationed before all the temples, even though they are set there against violence, nonetheless bring some terror to the speaker, so that in the Forum and in a court, although we are fenced about with safeguards salutary and necessary, we still cannot so much as feel no fear without some fear. Were I to think these things ranged against Milo, I would yield to the times, gentlemen; for I would not suppose that, amid such a force of arms, there was any room for a speech. But I am restored and refreshed by the counsel of Cn. Pompeius, a man most wise and most just, who surely would not think it consistent with his own justice to hand over to the weapons of soldiers the same man whom he had handed over to the verdicts of jurors, nor consistent with his wisdom to arm the rashness of an inflamed multitude with public authority.

non illa praesidia quae pro templis omnibus cernitis, etsi contra vim conlocata sunt, non adferunt tamen oratori terroris aliquid, ut in foro et in iudicio, quamquam praesidiis salutaribus et necessariis saepti sumus, tamen ne non timere quidem sine aliquo timore possimus. quae si opposita Miloni putarem, cederem tempori, iudices, nec enim inter tantam vim armorum existimarem esse orationi locum. sed me recreat et reficit Cn. Pompei, sapientissimi et iustissimi viri, consilium, qui profecto nec iustitiae suae putaret esse, quem reum sententiis iudicum tradidisset, eundem telis militum dedere, nec sapientiae temeritatem concitatae multitudinis auctoritate publica armare.

Therefore those arms, those centurions, those cohorts proclaim to us not peril but protection, and urge us to be not only of a quiet but even of a great spirit; nor do they promise mere support to my defence, but silence as well. As for the rest of the crowd — the part of it, at least, that consists of citizens — it is wholly ours; nor is there any one of those whom you see gazing from every quarter, wherever any part of the Forum can be glimpsed, and awaiting the outcome of this trial, who does not, while he favours the courage of Milo, judge that today there is being fought out a contest over himself, his children, his country, his fortunes. There is one class of men adverse and hostile to us: those whom the madness of P. Clodius fed on plunder and arson and every public ruin; men who were even goaded at yesterday’s assembly to dictate to you with their cries what your verdict should be. If perchance there should be any shouting from them, it ought to warn you to keep that citizen who has always, for the sake of your safety, made nothing of that breed of men and of their loudest clamours.

quam ob rem illa arma, centuriones, cohortes non periculum nobis, sed praesidium denuntiant, neque solum ut quieto, sed etiam ut magno animo simus hortantur, nec auxilium modo defensioni meae verum etiam silentium pollicentur. reliqua vero multitudo, quae quidem est civium, tota nostra est, nec eorum quisquam quos undique intuentis, unde aliqua fori pars aspici potest, et huius exitum iudici exspectantis videtis, non cum virtuti Milonis favet, tum de se, de liberis suis, de patria, de fortunis hodierno die decertari putat. unum genus est adversum infestumque nobis eorum quos P. Clodi furor rapinis et incendiis et omnibus exitiis publicis pavit; qui hesterna etiam contione incitati sunt ut vobis voce praeirent quid iudicaretis. quorum clamor si qui forte fuerit, admonere vos debebit ut eum civem retineatis qui semper genus illud hominum clamoresque maximos prae vestra salute neglexit.

Therefore be present in spirit, gentlemen, and lay aside whatever fear you have. For if ever you had the power of giving judgement concerning good and brave men, if ever concerning citizens of high desert, if in short there was ever given to chosen men of the most august orders an occasion to declare by deed and verdict the goodwill toward brave and good citizens which they had often signified by look and word, then surely at this present time you hold that power entire: to determine whether we, who have always been devoted to your authority, are always to mourn in misery, or whether, long harried by the most abandoned of citizens, we are at last, through you and through your loyalty, your courage and your wisdom, to be restored.

quam ob rem adeste animis, iudices, et timorem, si quem habetis, deponite. nam si umquam de bonis et fortibus viris, si umquam de bene meritis civibus potestas vobis iudicandi fuit, si denique umquam locus amplissimorum ordinum delectis viris datus est ut sua studia erga fortis et bonos civis, quae voltu et verbis saepe significassent, re et sententiis declararent, hoc profecto tempore eam potestatem omnem vos habetis ut statuatis utrum nos qui semper vestrae auctoritati dediti fuimus semper miseri lugeamus an diu vexati a perditissimis civibus aliquando per vos ac per vestram fidem, virtutem sapientiamque recreemur.

For what can be said or imagined more laborious, gentlemen, more anxious, more sorely tried than the case of us two, who, drawn into public life by the hope of the most ample rewards, cannot be free of the dread of the cruellest punishments? For my part, I always thought that the other tempests and storms were to be braved by Milo only in those waves of the popular assemblies, because he had always taken the side of the good against the wicked; but in a court of law, and in that council in which the most august men, drawn from the united orders, sit as judges, I never supposed that Milo’s enemies would have any hope at all of destroying not merely his safety but even his glory through the agency of such men as these.

quid enim nobis duobus, iudices, laboriosius, quid magis sollicitum, magis exercitum dici aut fingi potest, qui spe amplissimorum praemiorum ad rem publicam adducti metu crudelissimorum suppliciorum carere non possumus? equidem ceteras tempestates et procellas in illis dumtaxat fluctibus contionum semper putavi Miloni esse subeundas, quia semper pro bonis contra improbos senserat, in iudicio vero et in eo consilio in quo ex coniunctis ordinibus amplissimi viri iudicarent numquam existimavi spem ullam esse habituros Milonis inimicos ad eius non modo salutem exstinguendam sed etiam gloriam per talis viros infringendam.

And yet in this case, gentlemen, we shall not, for the defence against this charge, lean upon the tribunate of T. Annius and all that he has done for the safety of the commonwealth. Unless you see with your own eyes that an ambush was laid for Milo by Clodius, we shall neither beg you to pardon us this charge on account of his many splendid services to the commonwealth, nor demand that, because the death of P. Clodius was your salvation, you should therefore set it down to the credit of Milo’s courage rather than to the good fortune of the Roman people. But if his ambush is made clearer than this daylight, then at last I shall implore and entreat you, gentlemen, that, if we have lost everything else, this much at least be left us: that it be lawful to defend our life, with impunity, against the audacity and the weapons of our enemies.

quamquam in hac causa iudices, T. Anni tribunatu rebusque omnibus pro salute rei publicae gestis ad huius criminis defensionem non abutemur. Nisi oculis videritis insidias Miloni a Clodio esse factas, nec deprecaturi sumus ut crimen hoc nobis propter multa praeclara in rem publicam merita condonetis, nec postulaturi ut, quia mors P. Clodi salus vestra fuerit, idcirco eam virtuti Milonis potius quam populi Romani felicitati adsignetis. sin illius insidiae clariores hac luce fuerint, tum denique obsecrabo obtestaborque vos, iudices, si cetera amisimus, hoc nobis saltem ut relinquatur, vitam ab inimicorum audacia telisque ut impune liceat defendere.

But before I come to that part of my speech which properly belongs to your inquiry, I think I must refute the things that have so often been flung about, both in the Senate by his enemies and in the assembly by the wicked and, a little while ago, by the prosecutors, so that, every error being cleared away, you may see plainly the matter that comes before your court. They say that it is contrary to divine law for a man to look upon the light who confesses that a man has been slain by him. In what city, then, do men of utter folly maintain this? Why, in the very one which first saw the trial, on a capital charge, of M. Horatius, that bravest of men, who — though the state was not yet free — was nonetheless acquitted by the assembly of the Roman people, when he confessed that his sister had been killed by his own hand.

sed ante quam ad eam orationem venio quae est propria vestrae quaestionis videntur ea mihi esse refutanda quae et in senatu ab inimicis saepe iactata sunt et in contione ab improbis et paulo ante ab accusatoribus, ut omni errore sublato rem plane quae veniat in iudicium videre possitis. negant intueri lucem esse fas ei qui a se hominem occisum esse fateatur. in qua tandem urbe hoc homines stultissimi disputant? nempe in ea quae primum iudicium de capite vidit M. Horati, fortissimi viri, qui nondum libera civitate tamen populi Romani comitiis liberatus est, cum sua manu sororem esse interfectam fateretur.

Or is there anyone who does not know that, when there is an inquiry into a man’s being slain, either it is usually denied that the deed was done at all, or it is defended as having been done rightly and lawfully? Unless, that is, you suppose that P. Africanus was out of his mind, who, when he was asked by C. Carbo, tribune of the plebs, seditiously in the assembly, what he thought of the death of Ti. Gracchus, answered that he seemed to have been killed by right. For neither could that famous Servilius Ahala, nor P. Nasica, nor L. Opimius, nor C. Marius, nor, in my own consulship, the Senate be held free of crime, if it were a crime to put wicked citizens to death. And so it is not without reason, gentlemen, that the most learned of men have handed down to memory, even in their invented tales, that the man who, to avenge his father, had slain his mother was acquitted — when the votes of men were divided — by the verdict not only of a divinity but of the wisest of goddesses.

an est quisquam qui hoc ignoret, cum de homine occiso quaeratur, aut negari solere omnino esse factum aut recte et iure factum esse defendi? Nisi vero existimatis dementem P. Africanum fuisse qui, cum a C. Carbone tribuno plebis seditiose in contione interrogaretur quid de Ti. Gracchi morte sentiret, responderit iure caesum videri. neque enim posset aut Ahala ille Servilius aut P. Nasica aut L. Opimius aut C. Marius aut me consule senatus non nefarius haberi, si sceleratos civis interfici nefas esset. itaque hoc, iudices, non sine causa etiam fictis fabulis doctissimi homines memoriae prodiderunt, eum qui patris ulciscendi causa matrem necavisset variatis hominum sententiis non solum divina sed etiam sapientissimae deae sententia liberatum.

But if the Twelve Tables willed that a nocturnal thief might be killed with impunity by any means whatever, and a thief by day if he should defend himself with a weapon, who is there who would think that, in whatever manner a man is killed, there is ground for punishment — when he sees that sometimes a sword is held out to us for the slaying of a man by the laws themselves? And yet, if there is any occasion at all for the lawful killing of a man — and there are many — surely that one is not merely just but even necessary, when violence is repelled by violence. When a military tribune in the army of C. Marius, a kinsman of that commander, would have ravished the chastity of a soldier, he was killed by the very man on whom he was attempting that violence; for the upright young man chose rather to act at his own peril than to suffer disgrace. And that great man freed him, guiltless of crime, from all peril.

quod si xii tabulae nocturnum furem quoquo modo, diurnum autem, si se telo defenderet, interfici impune voluerunt, quis est qui, quoquo modo quis interfectus sit, puniendum putet, cum videat aliquando gladium nobis ad hominem occidendum ab ipsis porrigi legibus? atqui, si tempus est ullum iure hominis necandi, quae multa sunt, certe illud est non modo iustum verum etiam necessarium, cum vi vis inlata defenditur. pudicitiam cum eriperet militi tribunus militaris in exercitu C. Mari, propinquus eius imperatoris, interfectus ab eo est cui vim adferebat; facere enim probus adulescens periculose quam perpeti turpiter maluit. atque hunc ille summus vir scelere solutum periculo liberavit.

But against an ambusher and a brigand, what death can be inflicted unjustly? What is the meaning of our escorts, what of our swords? Surely it would not be lawful to have these, if it were on no terms lawful to use them. This, then, gentlemen, is a law not written but born in us — one which we did not learn, receive, or read, but which we seized, drank in, and wrung from nature herself; a law to which we were not trained but made, not schooled but steeped: that, if our life should fall into any ambush, into the violence and weapons of brigands or of enemies, every honourable means of securing our safety should be lawful.

insidiatori vero et latroni quae potest inferri iniusta nex? quid comitatus nostri, quid gladii volunt? quos habere certe non liceret, si uti illis nullo pacto liceret. est igitur haec, iudices, non scripta, sed nata lex, quam non didicimus, accepimus, legimus, verum ex natura ipsa adripuimus, hausimus, expressimus, ad quam non docti sed facti, non instituti sed imbuti sumus, ut, si vita nostra in aliquas insidias, si in vim et in tela aut latronum aut inimicorum incidisset, omnis honesta ratio esset expediendae salutis.

For amid arms the laws fall silent, and bid no one wait upon them, since the man who would wait must pay an unjust penalty before he can exact a just one. And yet, with great wisdom and in a certain sense tacitly, the law itself grants the power of self-defence: for it forbids not the killing of a man, but the carrying of a weapon for the purpose of killing a man, so that, when the purpose and not the weapon was at issue, the man who had used a weapon for the sake of defending himself should be judged to have carried the weapon not for the sake of killing a man. Let this, then, stand fast in the case, gentlemen; for I do not doubt that I shall make my defence good to you, if you bear in mind what you cannot forget — that an ambusher may be killed by right.

silent enim leges inter arma nec se exspectari iubent, cum ei qui exspectare velit ante iniusta poena luenda sit quam iusta repetenda. etsi persapienter et quodam modo tacite dat ipsa lex potestatem defendendi, quae non hominem occidi, sed esse cum telo hominis occidendi causa vetat, ut, cum causa, non telum quaereretur, qui sui defendendi causa telo esset usus, non hominis occidendi causa habuisse telum iudicaretur. quapropter hoc maneat in causa, iudices; non enim dubito quin probaturus sim vobis defensionem meam, si id memineritis quod oblivisci non potestis insidiatorem interfici iure posse.

There follows the point most often urged by Milo’s enemies: that the Senate judged the bloodshed in which P. Clodius was killed to have been done against the commonwealth. But that bloodshed the Senate approved not by its votes alone but even by its enthusiasm. For how often was that cause pleaded by us in the Senate, and with what assent of the whole order — assent neither silent nor concealed! When, in a Senate of the fullest attendance, were four men found, or five at most, who did not approve the cause of Milo? This is declared by those half-dead harangues of that singed tribune of the plebs, in which day after day he invidiously charged me with my own power, when he kept saying that the Senate decreed not what it thought but what I wished. If indeed this is to be called power, rather than a modest authority in good causes that comes of great services to the commonwealth, or some little favour among good men that comes of these dutiful labours of mine — then let it be called so, by all means, provided only that we use it for the safety of the good against the frenzy of the abandoned.

sequitur illud quod a Milonis inimicis saepissime dicitur, caedem in qua P. Clodius occisus esset senatum iudicasse contra rem publicam esse factam. illam vero senatus non sententiis suis solum sed etiam studiis comprobavit. quotiens enim est illa causa a nobis acta in senatu, quibus adsensionibus universi ordinis, quam nec tacitis nec occultis! quando enim frequentissimo senatu quattuor aut summum quinque sunt inventi qui Milonis causam non probarent? declarant huius ambusti tribuni plebis illae intermortuae contiones quibus cotidie meam potentiam invidiose criminabatur, cum diceret senatum non quod sentiret sed quod ego vellem decernere. quae quidem si potentia est appellanda potius quam propter magna in rem publicam merita mediocris in bonis causis auctoritas aut propter hos officiosos labores meos non nulla apud bonos gratia, appelletur ita sane, dum modo ea nos utamur pro salute bonorum contra amentiam perditorum.

But this special inquiry, though it is not unjust, the Senate nonetheless never thought ought to be set up; for there were laws, there were standing courts, both for bloodshed and for violence, nor did the death of P. Clodius bring the Senate so great a sorrow and grief that a new inquiry should be established. For when the Senate had been stripped of the power of decreeing an inquiry into that incestuous defilement of his, who can believe that it thought a new inquiry ought to be set up into his death? Why, then, did the Senate decree that the burning of the Senate-house, the assault upon the house of M. Lepidus, this very bloodshed had been done against the commonwealth? Because no violence has ever been undertaken among citizens in a free state that was not against the commonwealth —

hanc vero quaestionem, etsi non est iniqua, numquam tamen senatus constituendam putavit; erant enim leges, erant quaestiones vel de caede vel de vi, nec tantum maerorem ac luctum senatui mors P. Clodi adferebat ut nova quaestio constitueretur. cuius enim de illo incesto stupro iudicium decernendi senatui potestas esset erepta, de eius interitu quis potest credere senatum iudicium novum constituendum putasse? cur igitur incendium curiae, oppugnationem aedium M. Lepidi, caedem hanc ipsam contra rem publicam senatus factam esse decrevit? quia nulla vis umquam est in libera civitate suscepta inter civis non contra rem publicam—

for no defence against violence is ever to be wished for, but sometimes it is necessary — unless, that is, the day on which Ti. Gracchus was killed, or the one on which Gaius was, or the arms of Saturninus, even though they were put down for the good of the commonwealth, did not nonetheless wound the commonwealth. And so I myself moved, when it was established that bloodshed had been done on the Appian Way, not that the man who had defended himself had acted against the commonwealth, but, since there was violence and ambush in the matter, I reserved the charge for trial, while I set my mark upon the deed. But if it had been permitted, through that raving tribune of the plebs, for the Senate to carry out what it thought, we should have no new inquiry. For it was decreeing that the matter be tried under the old laws, only out of the ordinary course. The motion was split at the demand of someone or other — for there is no need for me to bring forward all men’s shameful acts — and so the remaining authority of the Senate was abolished by a bought veto.

non enim est ulla defensio contra vim umquam optanda, sed non numquam est necessaria,—nisi vero aut ille dies quo Ti. Gracchus est caesus, aut ille quo Gaius, aut arma Saturnini non, etiam si e re publica oppressa sunt, rem publicam tamen volnerarunt. itaque ego ipse decrevi, cum caedem in via Appia factam esse constaret, non eum qui se defendisset contra rem publicam fecisse, sed, cum inesset in re vis et insidiae, crimen iudicio reservavi, rem notavi. quod si per furiosum illum tr. tribunum pl. plebis senatui quod sentiebat perficere licuisset, novam quaestionem nullam haberemus. decernebat enim ut veteribus legibus, tantum modo extra ordinem, quaereretur. divisa sententia est postulante nescio quo—nihil enim necesse est omnium me flagitia proferre —sic reliqua auctoritas senatus empta intercessione sublata est.

“But,” it is said, “Cn. Pompeius, by his bill, gave judgement both upon the matter and upon the cause: for he brought in a measure concerning the bloodshed done on the Appian Way, in which P. Clodius was killed.” What, then, did he bring in? Why, that there be an inquiry. And what is to be inquired into? Whether the deed was done? But that is established. By whom? But that is plain. He saw, then, that a defence on the ground of right could be undertaken even in the confession of the deed. And had he not seen that the man who confessed could be acquitted — seeing that we confess — he would never have ordered an inquiry at all, nor would he have given you, in your judging, this letter of acquittal, so salutary, any more than that grim one of condemnation. To my mind Cn. Pompeius has not only judged nothing more severely against Milo, but has even laid down what you, in judging, ought to look to. For the man who appointed to confession not a penalty but a defence thought that the cause of the death, and not the death itself, was to be inquired into.

at enim Cn. Pompeius rogatione sua et de re et de causa iudicavit: tulit enim de caede quae in Appia via facta esset, in qua P. Clodius occisus esset. quid ergo tulit? nempe ut quaereretur. quid porro quaerendum est? factumne sit? at constat. A quo? at paret. vidit igitur etiam in confessione facti iuris tamen defensionem suscipi posse. quod nisi vidisset, posse absolvi eum qui fateretur, cum videret nos fateri, neque quaeri umquam iussisset nec vobis tam hanc salutarem in iudicando litteram quam illam tristem dedisset. mihi vero Cn. Pompeius non modo nihil gravius contra Milonem iudicasse sed etiam statuisse videtur quid vos in iudicando spectare oporteret. nam qui non poenam confessioni, sed defensionem dedit, is causam interitus quaerendam, non interitum putavit.

As for whether he thought what he did of his own accord was to be set down to Publius Clodius or to the times — that surely he himself will say. M. Drusus, tribune of the plebs, a most noble man, in his own day the champion of the Senate and, in those times indeed, almost its patron, the maternal uncle of this juror of ours, the bravest of men, M. Cato, was killed in his own house. Nothing was laid before the people about his death; no inquiry was decreed by the Senate. What grief there was in this city, as we have heard from our fathers, when that nocturnal violence was brought against P. Africanus as he rested in his own house! Who did not groan then, who did not burn with anguish that the death of a man whom all would have wished, if it could be, to be immortal, was not so much as awaited as a natural end? Was there, then, any inquiry brought concerning the death of Africanus? Surely none.

iam illud ipse dicet profecto quod sua sponte fecit, Publione Clodio tribuendum putarit an tempori. domi suae nobilissimus vir, senatus propugnator atque illis quidem temporibus paene patronus, avunculus huius iudicis nostri fortissimi viri, M. Catonis, tribunus plebis M. Drusus occisus est. nihil de eius morte populus consultus est, nulla quaestio decreta a senatu est. quantum luctum fuisse in hac urbe a nostris patribus accepimus, cum P. Africano domi suae quiescenti illa nocturna vis esset inlata? quis tum non ingemuit, quis non arsit dolore, quem immortalem, si fieri posset, omnes esse cuperent, eius ne necessariam quidem exspectatam esse mortem? num igitur ulla quaestio de Africani morte lata est? certe nulla.

Why so? Because famous men are not killed by one crime and obscure men by another. Let there be a difference between the dignity of the lives of the highest and the lowest; but death inflicted by crime, at least, let it be held bound by the same penalties and the same laws. Unless, perhaps, a man will be the more a parricide if he kills a father of consular rank than if he kills a lowly one, or the death of P. Clodius will be the more atrocious for this, that he was killed among the monuments of his own ancestors — for so it is often said by those men — just as though Appius the Blind built that road not for the people to use, but for his own descendants to play the brigand upon with impunity!

quid ita? quia non alio facinore clari homines, alio obscuri necantur. intersit inter vitae dignitatem summorum atque infimorum; mors quidem inlata per scelus isdem et poenis teneatur et legibus. Nisi forte magis erit parricida, si qui consularem patrem quam si qui humilem necarit, aut eo mors atrocior erit P. Clodi quod is in monumentis maiorum suorum sit interfectus —hoc enim ab istis saepe dicitur— proinde quasi Appius ille Caecus viam munierit, non qua populus uteretur, sed ubi impune sui posteri latrocinarentur!

And so, when on that same Appian Way P. Clodius had killed M. Papirius, a most distinguished Roman knight, that deed was not to be punished — for a noble man had killed a Roman knight among his own monuments — but now what tragedies the name of that same Appian Way calls up! The road that was passed over in silence when it was stained earlier with the bloodshed of an honourable and innocent man is the very road now invoked again and again, since it has been steeped in the blood of a brigand and a parricide. But why do I recall those things? A slave of P. Clodius was caught in the temple of Castor, whom he had stationed there to kill Cn. Pompeius. A dagger was wrenched from his hands as he confessed. Thereafter Pompeius kept away from the Forum, kept away from the Senate, kept away from public life; he sheltered himself behind his door and his walls, not behind the right of laws and courts.

itaque in eadem ista Appia cum ornatissimum equitem Romanum P. Clodius M. Papirium occidisset, non fuit illud facinus puniendum—homo enim nobilis in suis monumentis equitem Romanum occiderat—nunc eiusdem Appiae nomen quantas tragoedias excitat! quae cruentata antea caede honesti atque innocentis viri silebatur, eadem nunc crebro usurpatur, postea quam latronis et parricidae sanguine imbuta est. sed quid ego illa commemoro? comprehensus est in templo Castoris servus P. Clodi, quem ille ad Cn. Pompeium interficiendum conlocarat. extorta est ei confitenti sica de manibus. caruit foro postea Pompeius, caruit senatu, caruit publico; ianua se ac parietibus, non iure legum iudiciorumque texit.

Was any bill brought, was any new inquiry decreed? And yet, if ever matter, or man, or time was worthy of one, surely all these things in that case were of the highest. An ambusher had been stationed in the Forum and in the very forecourt of the Senate; death, moreover, was being prepared for the man on whose life the safety of the state rested; and that, too, at such a season of the commonwealth that, had that one man perished, not this state alone but all nations would have fallen. Unless, indeed, because the deed was not accomplished, it was therefore not to be punished — just as though it were the outcomes of things, and not the designs of men, that the laws avenge. There was less to grieve over, the deed not being accomplished, but it was no less surely to be punished.

num quae rogatio lata, num quae nova quaestio decreta est? atqui si res, si vir, si tempus ullum dignum fuit, certe haec in illa causa summa omnia fuerunt. insidiator erat in foro conlocatus atque in vestibulo ipso senatus; ei viro autem mors parabatur cuius in vita nitebatur salus civitatis; eo porro rei publicae tempore quo, si unus ille occidisset, non haec solum civitas sed gentes omnes concidissent. Nisi vero, quia perfecta res non est, non fuit punienda, proinde quasi exitus rerum, non hominum consilia legibus vindicentur. minus dolendum fuit re non perfecta, sed puniendum certe nihilo minus.

How often have I myself, gentlemen, escaped the weapons of P. Clodius and his bloody hands! Had not either my own fortune or the commonwealth’s preserved me from them, who in the end would have brought an inquiry concerning my death? But we are fools to dare to set Drusus, Africanus, Pompeius, our very selves, alongside P. Clodius. Those losses were bearable: the death of P. Clodius no one can bear with an even mind. The Senate mourns, the equestrian order grieves, the whole state is worn out with age, the towns are in squalor, the colonies are stricken, the very fields, in short, miss so beneficent, so salutary, so gentle a citizen.

quotiens ego ipse, iudices, ex P. Clodi telis et ex cruentis eius manibus effugi! ex quibus si me non vel mea vel rei publicae fortuna servasset, quis tandem de interitu meo quaestionem tulisset? sed stulti sumus qui Drusum, qui Africanum, Pompeium, nosmet ipsos cum P. Clodio conferre audeamus. tolerabilia fuerunt illa: P. Clodi mortem aequo animo ferre nemo potest. luget senatus, maeret equester ordo, tota civitas confecta senio est, squalent municipia, adflictantur coloniae, agri denique ipsi tam beneficum, tam salutarem, tam mansuetum civem desiderant.

That was not the reason, gentlemen, surely it was not, why Pompeius should think an inquiry ought to be brought; but a wise man, endowed with a certain lofty and divine mind, saw many things: that Clodius had been his enemy and Milo his friend; that if he too should rejoice in the common gladness of all, the loyalty of a reconciled goodwill might seem the more shaky. He saw many other things besides, but this above all: that, however harshly he himself had taken it, you would nonetheless judge bravely. And so he chose, from the most flourishing orders, their very luminaries; nor indeed, as certain men keep saying, did he set aside my friends in the choosing of the jurors. For neither did that most just of men plan such a thing, nor, in choosing good men, could he have achieved it, even had he wished. For my influence is not bounded by close intimacies, which cannot spread wide, since the daily commerce of life cannot be carried on with many; but if I have any influence, I have it from this, that the commonwealth has joined me with good men. And when he was choosing from among these the best men, and judged that this above all bore upon his own good faith, he could not but choose men devoted to me.

non fuit ea causa, iudices, profecto, non fuit cur sibi censeret Pompeius quaestionem ferendam, sed homo sapiens atque alta et divina quadam mente praeditus multa vidit: fuisse illum sibi inimicum, familiarem Milonem; in communi omnium laetitia si etiam ipse gauderet, timuit ne videretur infirmior fides reconciliatae gratiae. multa etiam alia vidit, sed illud maxime, quamvis atrociter ipse tulisset, vos tamen fortiter iudicaturos. itaque delegit ex florentissimis ordinibus ipsa lumina, neque vero, quod non nulli dictitant, secrevit in iudicibus legendis amicos meos. neque enim hoc cogitavit vir iustissimus, neque in bonis viris legendis id adsequi potuisset, etiam si cupisset. non enim mea gratia familiaritatibus continetur, quae late patere non possunt, propterea quod consuetudines victus non possunt esse cum multis; sed, si quid possumus, ex eo possumus quod res publica nos coniunxit cum bonis. ex quibus ille cum optimos viros legeret idque maxime ad fidem suam pertinere arbitraretur, non potuit legere non studiosos mei.

As for his wishing above all that you, L. Domitius, should preside over this inquiry, he sought nothing else but justice, gravity, humanity, good faith. He brought it in that the presiding officer must be of consular rank: because, I take it, he held it the part of leading men to withstand both the fickleness of the multitude and the rashness of the abandoned. From among the consulars he chose you in preference to all: for you had given, ever since your youth, the greatest proofs of how thoroughly you despise the frenzies of the mob.

quod vero te, L. Domiti, huic quaestioni praeesse maxime voluit, nihil quaesivit aliud nisi iustitiam, gravitatem, humanitatem, fidem. tulit ut consularem necesse esset: credo, quod principum munus esse ducebat resistere et levitati multitudinis et perditorum temeritati. ex consularibus te creavit potissimum: dederas enim quam contemneres popularis insanias iam ab adulescentia documenta maxima.

Wherefore, gentlemen — that we may come at last to the case and the charge — if neither is every confession of a deed without precedent, nor has anything been judged by the Senate concerning our cause otherwise than we ourselves should wish, and the very proposer of the law, though there was no dispute about the fact, nonetheless willed that there be a debate about the right, and jurors of such a kind have been chosen, and a man set over the inquiry who will weigh these matters justly and wisely — it remains, gentlemen, that you ought now to inquire into nothing else but which of the two laid an ambush for the other. That you may the more easily perceive this by the proofs, while I lay the matter before you briefly, I beg you to attend with care.

quam ob rem, iudices, ut aliquando ad causam crimenque veniamus, si neque omnis confessio facti est inusitata, neque de causa nostra quicquam aliter ac nos vellemus a senatu iudicatum est, et lator ipse legis, cum esset controversia nulla facti, iuris tamen disceptationem esse voluit, et ei lecti iudices, isque praepositus est quaestioni qui haec iuste sapienterque disceptet, reliquum est, iudices, ut nihil iam quaerere aliud debeatis nisi uter utri insidias fecerit. quod quo facilius argumentis perspicere possitis, rem gestam vobis dum breviter expono, quaeso, diligenter attendite.

P. Clodius, when he had resolved to harry the commonwealth with every crime during his praetorship, and saw that the elections of the previous year had been so dragged out that he could not hold the praetorship for many months — since he had no eye to the rank of the office, as others have, but both wished to escape L. Paulus as his colleague, a citizen of singular virtue, and sought a whole year for tearing the commonwealth to pieces — suddenly abandoned his own year and transferred himself to the next, not, as happens, out of any religious scruple, but in order to have, as he himself put it, for the conduct of his praetorship — that is, for the overthrow of the commonwealth — a full and entire year.

P. Clodius, cum statuisset omni scelere in praetura vexare rem publicam videretque ita tracta esse comitia anno superiore ut non multos mensis praeturam gerere posset, qui non honoris gradum spectaret, ut ceteri, sed et L. Paulum conlegam effugere vellet, singulari virtute civem, et annum integrum ad dilacerandam rem publicam quaereret, subito reliquit annum suum seseque in proximum transtulit, non, ut fit, religione aliqua, sed ut haberet, quod ipse dicebat, ad praeturam gerendam, hoc est ad evertendam rem publicam, plenum annum atque integrum.

It occurred to him that his praetorship would be crippled and feeble with Milo as consul; and, what is more, he saw that Milo was being made consul by the highest agreement of the Roman people. He betook himself to Milo’s competitors, but in such a way that he alone steered the whole canvass, even against their will, that he carried the whole election, as he kept boasting, on his own shoulders. He summoned the tribes, thrust himself in, enrolled a new Colline tribe by a levy of the most abandoned citizens. The more confusion that man stirred up, the more this man grew stronger by the day. When that fellow, ready for every crime, saw the bravest of men, his bitterest enemy, the most certain of consuls, and understood that this had been declared again and again not only by the talk but even by the votes of the Roman people, he began to act openly and to say plainly that Milo must be killed.

occurrebat ei mancam ac debilem praeturam futuram suam consule Milone; eum porro summo consensu populi Romani consulem fieri videbat. contulit se ad eius competitores, sed ita totam ut petitionem ipse solus etiam invitis illis gubernaret, tota ut comitia suis, ut dictitabat, umeris sustineret. convocabat tribus, se interponebat, Collinam novam dilectu perditissimorum civium conscribebat. quanto ille plura miscebat, tanto hic magis in dies convalescebat. Vbi vidit homo ad omne facinus paratissimus fortissimum virum, inimicissimum suum, certissimum consulem, idque intellexit non solum sermonibus, sed etiam suffragiis populi Romani saepe esse declaratum, palam agere coepit et aperte dicere occidendum Milonem.

He had brought down from the Apennines the rustic and barbarous slaves with whom he had ravaged the public forests and harried Etruria — the very men you have been seeing. The matter was not in the least obscure. For he kept saying openly that the consulship could not be wrested from Milo, but his life could. He hinted at this often in the Senate, said it in the assembly; nay, even to M. Favonius, the bravest of men, who asked him on what hope he was raging while Milo lived, he answered that within three days, or four at most, Milo would be dead — a saying of his which Favonius at once reported to this M. Cato.

servos agrestis et barbaros, quibus silvas publicas depopulatus erat Etruriamque vexarat, ex Appennino deduxerat, quos videbatis. res erat minime obscura. etenim dictitabat palam consulatum Miloni eripi non posse, vitam posse. significavit hoc saepe in senatu, dixit in contione; quin etiam M. Favonio, fortissimo viro, quaerenti ex eo qua spe fureret Milone vivo, respondit triduo illum aut summum quadriduo esse periturum; quam vocem eius ad hunc M. Catonem statim Favonius detulit.

Meanwhile, since Clodius knew — and this was no hard thing to learn from the people of Lanuvium — that on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of February Milo had a journey to make to Lanuvium, a journey set, prescribed, and unavoidable, to nominate the flamen, because Milo was dictator of Lanuvium, Clodius himself set out from Rome suddenly, the day before, in order — as the event made plain — to lay an ambush for Milo before his own estate; and he set out in such a way as to leave behind a turbulent public meeting, held on that very day, at which his frenzy was sorely missed — a meeting he would never have left, had he not wished to keep the appointed place and hour of his crime.

interim cum sciret Clodius—neque enim erat id difficile scire a Lanuvinis —iter sollemne, legitimum, necessarium ante diem xiii Kalendas Februarias Miloni esse Lanuvium ad flaminem prodendum, quod erat dictator Lanuvi Milo, Roma subito ipse profectus pridie est ut ante suum fundum, quod re intellectum est, Miloni insidias conlocaret; atque ita profectus est ut contionem turbulentam in qua eius furor desideratus est, quae illo ipso die habita est, relinqueret, quam, nisi obire facinoris locum tempusque voluisset, numquam reliquisset.

Milo, on the other hand, having been in the Senate that day until the Senate was dismissed, came home, changed his shoes and his clothes, waited a little while, as one does, for his wife to make herself ready, and then set out at the hour by which Clodius, had he indeed meant to come to Rome that day, could already have returned. Clodius meets him — lightly equipped, on horseback, no carriage, no baggage, no Greek companions in his usual way, without his wife, which was almost unheard of — while this so-called ambusher, who had supposedly arranged that journey for the purpose of committing murder, was riding in a carriage with his wife, wrapped in a travelling-cloak, with a great, encumbering, womanish, and dainty train of maids and boys.

Milo autem cum in senatu fuisset eo die quoad senatus est dimissus, domum venit, calceos et vestimenta mutavit, paulisper, dum se uxor, ut fit, comparat, commoratus est, dein profectus id temporis cum iam Clodius, si quidem eo die Romam venturus erat, redire potuisset. obviam fit ei Clodius, expeditus, in equo, nulla raeda, nullis impedimentis, nullis Graecis comitibus, ut solebat, sine uxore, quod numquam fere: cum hic insidiator, qui iter illud ad caedem faciendam apparasset, cum uxore veheretur in raeda, paenulatus, magno et impedito et muliebri ac delicato ancillarum puerorumque comitatu.

He falls in with Clodius before Clodius’s estate, at about the eleventh hour, or not much off it. At once a number of men with weapons rush upon him from the higher ground; head-on, they kill the driver. But when Milo, throwing back his cloak, had leapt down from the carriage and was defending himself with a fierce spirit, the men who were with Clodius drew their swords and, some of them running back to the carriage to attack Milo from behind, others — because they supposed Milo already killed — beginning to cut down those of his slaves who were behind; of these, those who were loyal and steadfast in spirit toward their master, some were slain, while others, when they saw the fighting at the carriage, were kept from coming to their master’s aid, heard from Clodius himself that Milo was killed, and truly believed it, did a thing — I shall say it openly, not to divert the charge, but because it is what happened — that Milo’s slaves did, with their master neither ordering nor knowing nor present, the very thing that every man would have wished his own slaves to do in such a case.

fit obviam Clodio ante fundum eius hora fere undecima aut non multo secus. statim complures cum telis in hunc faciunt de loco superiore impetum; adversi raedarium occidunt. cum autem hic de raeda reiecta paenula desiluisset seque acri animo defenderet, illi qui erant cum Clodio gladiis eductis, partim recurrere ad raedam ut a tergo Milonem adorirentur, partim, quod hunc iam interfectum putarent, caedere incipiunt eius servos qui post erant; ex quibus qui animo fideli in dominum et praesenti fuerunt, partim occisi sunt, partim, cum ad raedam pugnari viderent, domino succurrere prohiberentur, Milonem occisum et ex ipso Clodio audirent et re vera putarent, fecerunt id servi Milonis—dicam enim aperte non derivandi criminis causa, sed ut factum est—nec imperante nec sciente nec praesente domino, quod suos quisque servos in tali re facere voluisset.

These things were done just as I have set them out, gentlemen: the ambusher was overcome, force was conquered by force, or rather audacity was crushed by valour. I say nothing of what the commonwealth gained, nothing of what you gained, nothing of what all good men gained: let none of that profit Milo, who was born under this destiny, that he could not even save himself without at the same time saving the commonwealth and you. If this could not be done lawfully, I have nothing to plead. But if reason has prescribed this to the learned, necessity to the barbarian, custom to the nations, and nature herself to the very beasts — that they should always repel all violence, by whatever means they can, from their body, their head, their life — then you cannot judge this deed wicked without judging at the same time that all who fall among brigands must perish, either by those men’s weapons or by your votes.

haec sicuti exposui ita gesta sunt, iudices: insidiator superatus est, vi victa vis vel potius oppressa virtute audacia est. nihil dico quid res publica consecuta sit, nihil quid vos, nihil quid omnes boni: nihil sane id prosit Miloni, qui hoc fato natus est ut ne se quidem servare potuerit quin una rem publicam vosque servaret. si id iure fieri non potuit, nihil habeo quod defendam. sin hoc et ratio doctis et necessitas barbaris et mos gentibus et feris natura ipsa praescripsit ut omnem semper vim quacumque ope possent a corpore, a capite, a vita sua propulsarent, non potestis hoc facinus improbum iudicare quin simul iudicetis omnibus qui in latrones inciderint aut illorum telis aut vestris sententiis esse pereundum.

But if Milo had thought so, surely it would have been more to be wished, for him, to offer his throat to P. Clodius — a throat sought by Clodius more than once, and not then for the first time — than to be slaughtered by you because he had not handed himself over to Clodius for slaughter. But if none of you thinks so, then this is what now comes to trial: not whether Clodius was killed, which we admit, but whether rightly or wrongly, a question often raised in many cases. That an ambush was laid is agreed, and it is this that the Senate judged to have been committed against the commonwealth; by which of the two it was laid is uncertain. It is on this point, then, that the bill was carried, that an inquiry be held. So the Senate censured the act, not the man, and Pompey raised the question of the law, not of the fact. Does anything else, then, come to trial except which of the two laid the ambush for the other? Surely nothing: if Milo for Clodius, let him not go unpunished; if Clodius for Milo, then let us be acquitted of the crime.

quod si ita putasset, certe optabilius Miloni fuit dare iugulum P. Clodio, non semel ab illo neque tum primum petitum, quam iugulari a vobis, quia se non iugulandum illi tradidisset. sin hoc nemo vestrum ita sentit, illud iam in iudicium venit, non occisusne sit, quod fatemur, sed iure an iniuria, quod multis in causis saepe quaesitum est. insidias factas esse constat, et id est quod senatus contra rem publicam factum iudicavit; ab utro factae sint incertum est. de hoc igitur latum est ut quaereretur. ita et senatus rem, non hominem notavit et Pompeius de iure, non de facto quaestionem tulit. num quid igitur aliud in iudicium venit nisi uter utri insidias fecerit? profecto nihil: si hic illi, ut ne sit impune; si ille huic, tum nos scelere solvamur.

By what means, then, can it be proved that Clodius laid the ambush for Milo? With a beast so bold, so wicked, it is enough to show that he had great cause, great hope set before him in Milo’s death, great advantages to gain. And so let that maxim of Cassius hold good in these two persons — to whose benefit a thing was done — even though good men are driven into crime by no profit, and the wicked often by a small one. Now, with Milo dead, Clodius would attain this: not only that he should be praetor under no consul able to keep him from doing any wrong, but also that he should be praetor under consuls who, if not helping him, would at any rate connive, so that he might hope to play his part in those frenzies he had planned — whose attempts, as he reckoned himself, those consuls would not wish to suppress, even if they could, supposing themselves to owe him so great a service, and, even if they wished to, could perhaps scarcely break the audacity of a man most criminal, hardened now by long habit.

quonam igitur pacto probari potest insidias Miloni fecisse Clodium? satis est in illa quidem tam audaci, tam nefaria belua docere, magnam ei causam, magnam spem in Milonis morte propositam, magnas utilitates fuisse. itaque illud Cassianum cui bono fuerit in his personis valeat, etsi boni nullo emolumento impelluntur in fraudem, improbi saepe parvo. atqui Milone interfecto Clodius haec adsequebatur, non modo ut praetor esset non eo consule quo sceleris facere nihil posset sed etiam ut eis consulibus praetor esset quibus si non adiuvantibus, at coniventibus certe speraret se posse eludere in illis suis cogitatis furoribus: cuius illi conatus, ut ipse ratiocinabatur, nec cuperent reprimere, si possent, cum tantum beneficium ei se debere arbitrarentur, et, si vellent, fortasse vix possent frangere hominis sceleratissimi conroboratam iam vetustate audaciam.

Or are you alone in your ignorance, gentlemen? Do you dwell in this city as strangers? Do your ears go travelling abroad, and have no part in this talk that runs through the whole community — what laws, if laws they are to be called and not firebrands of the city, plagues of the commonwealth, that man meant to fasten and brand upon us all? Produce, produce, I beg you, Sextus Clodius, that little book of your laws, which they say you snatched from his house and carried off out of the very midst of arms and the nightly mob, like the Palladium, so that you might bring this splendid gift, this equipment of a tribunate, to someone — had you found him — to administer the tribunate at your direction. And he gave me a look, those very eyes he used to wear when he was threatening everyone with everything. That light of the Senate-house moves me, to be sure! What? Do you think me angry with you, Sextus, when you have punished my bitterest enemy far more cruelly than the kindness of my nature would have demanded? You cast P. Clodius’s bloody corpse out of the house; you flung it into the street; you stripped it of its ancestral images, its funeral rites, its procession, its eulogy, and left it half-burned on a wretched heap of sticks, to be torn by the dogs of the night. Therefore, though you acted abominably, still, because it was upon my enemy that you spent your cruelty, I cannot praise you, but I certainly ought not to be angry.

an vero, iudices, vos soli ignoratis, vos hospites in hac urbe versamini, vestrae peregrinantur aures neque in hoc pervagato civitatis sermone versantur, quas ille leges, si leges nominandae sunt ac non faces urbis, pestes rei publicae, fuerit impositurus nobis omnibus atque inusturus? exhibe, exhibe, quaeso, Sexte Clodi, librarium illud legum vestrarum quod te aiunt eripuisse e domo et ex mediis armis turbaque nocturna tamquam Palladium sustulisse, ut praeclarum videlicet munus atque instrumentum tribunatus ad aliquem, si nactus esses, qui tuo arbitrio tribunatum gereret, deferre posses. et aspexit me illis quidem oculis quibus tum solebat cum omnibus omnia minabatur. movet me quippe lumen curiae! quid? tu me tibi iratum, Sexte, putas, cuius tu inimicissimum multo crudelius etiam punitus es, quam erat humanitatis meae postulare? tu P. Clodi cruentum cadaver eiecisti domo, tu in publicum abiecisti, tu spoliatum imaginibus, exsequiis, pompa, laudatione, infelicissimis lignis semiustilatum nocturnis canibus dilaniandum reliquisti. qua re, etsi nefarie fecisti, tamen, quoniam in meo inimico crudelitatem exprompsisti tuam, laudare non possum, irasci certe non debeo.

You have heard, gentlemen, how much it was in Clodius’s interest that Milo be killed: now turn your minds in turn to Milo. What interest had Milo in Clodius being killed? What reason was there for Milo — I will not say to allow it, but to wish for it? Clodius stood in Milo’s way as he hoped for the consulship. But with Clodius opposing, Milo’s hope went forward all the same — indeed it went forward the more for that, and he had no better canvasser than Clodius. With you, gentlemen, the memory of Milo’s services toward me and toward the commonwealth carried weight; my prayers and tears carried weight, by which I felt you then to be wonderfully moved; but far more weight was carried by the fear of impending dangers. For what citizen was there who could face P. Clodius’s praetorship, set loose, without the greatest dread of revolution? And you saw that it would be set loose, unless there were a consul with the daring and the power to bind it fast. When the whole Roman people felt that Milo alone was that man, who would hesitate to free himself from fear, and the commonwealth from peril, by his vote? But now, with Clodius removed, Milo must strive by the ordinary means to guard his standing; that singular glory, granted to him alone, which grew greater each day by the breaking of Clodius’s frenzies, has now fallen with Clodius’s death. You have won the right to fear no citizen; he has lost the exercise of his valour, his support for the consulship, the perennial spring of his glory. And so Milo’s consulship, which could not be shaken while Clodius lived, has only now, with Clodius dead, begun to be assailed. Clodius’s death, then, not only does Milo no good, but actually does him harm.

Audistis, iudices, quantum Clodi inter fuerit occidi Milonem: convertite animos nunc vicissim ad Milonem. quid Milonis intererat interfici Clodium? quid erat cur Milo non dicam admitteret, sed optaret? obstabat in spe consulatus Miloni Clodius. at eo repugnante fiebat, immo vero eo fiebat magis, nec me suffragatore meliore utebatur quam Clodio. valebat apud vos, iudices, Milonis erga me remque publicam meritorum memoria, valebant preces et lacrimae nostrae, quibus ego tum vos mirifice moveri sentiebam, sed plus multo valebat periculorum impendentium timor. quis enim erat civium qui sibi solutam P. Clodi praeturam sine maximo rerum novarum metu proponeret? solutam autem fore videbatis, nisi esset is consul qui eam auderet possetque constringere. Eum Milonem unum esse cum sentiret universus populus Romanus, quis dubitaret suffragio suo se metu, periculo rem publicam liberare? at nunc, Clodio remoto, usitatis iam rebus enitendum est Miloni ut tueatur dignitatem suam; singularis illa et huic uni concessa gloria quae cotidie augebatur frangendis furoribus Clodianis iam Clodi morte cecidit. vos adepti estis ne quem civem metueretis; hic exercitationem virtutis, suffragationem consulatus, fontem perennem gloriae suae perdidit. itaque Milonis consulatus qui vivo Clodio labefactari non poterat mortuo denique temptari coeptus est. non modo igitur nihil prodest sed obest etiam Clodi mors Miloni.

But hatred prevailed; he acted in anger, he acted as an enemy; he was the avenger of his own wrong, the punisher of his own grievance. What? If these motives were — I will not say greater in Clodius than in Milo, but greatest in Clodius, none at all in Milo, what more do you want? For why should Milo have hated Clodius, the crop and the material of his glory, beyond that civic hatred with which we hate all wicked men? In Clodius there was reason to hate Milo: first, the defender of my safety; then the harrier of his frenzy, the tamer of his arms; last of all, his very prosecutor; for Clodius was, as long as he lived, a defendant of Milo’s under the Lex Plotia (a law on public violence). With what spirit, then, do you believe that tyrant bore this? How great his hatred, and, in a man so unjust, how even just it was?

at valuit odium, fecit iratus, fecit inimicus, fuit ultor iniuriae, punitor doloris sui. quid? si haec non dico maiora fuerunt in Clodio quam in Milone, sed in illo maxima, nulla in hoc, quid voltis amplius? quid enim odisset Clodium Milo, segetem ac materiam suae gloriae, praeter hoc civile odium quo omnis improbos odimus? illi erat ut odisset primum defensorem salutis meae, deinde vexatorem furoris, domitorem armorum suorum, postremo etiam accusatorem suum; reus enim Milonis lege Plotia fuit Clodius quoad vixit. quo tandem animo hoc tyrannum illum tulisse creditis? quantum odium illius et in homine iniusto quam etiam iustum fuisse?

It remains that his own nature and habit should now defend Clodius, while these same things convict Milo. Clodius never did anything by violence; Milo, everything by violence. What? When I, gentlemen, while you mourned, withdrew from the city, was it a trial I feared — and not slaves, not arms, not violence? What just cause, then, would there have been for restoring me, had there not been an unjust one for casting me out? He had named a day for me, I suppose, had proposed a fine, had brought an action of high treason; and no doubt I had a trial to fear, in a case either bad, or merely my own, and not the most glorious and yours as well. No — I was unwilling that my fellow citizens, men saved by my counsels and my dangers, should be thrown into peril for my sake, against the arms of slaves, of beggared citizens, and of criminals.

reliquum est ut iam illum natura ipsius consuetudoque defendat, hunc autem haec eadem coarguant. nihil per vim umquam Clodius, omnia per vim Milo. quid? ego, iudices, cum maerentibus vobis urbe cessi, iudiciumne timui, non servos, non arma, non vim? quae fuisset igitur iusta causa restituendi mei, nisi fuisset iniusta eiciendi? diem mihi, credo, dixerat, multam inrogarat, actionem perduellionis intenderat, et mihi videlicet in causa aut mala aut mea, non et praeclarissima et vestra, iudicium timendum fuit. servorum et egentium civium et facinorosorum armis meos civis, meis consiliis periculisque servatos, pro me obici nolui.

For I saw — yes, I saw with my own eyes — this very Q. Hortensius, the light and ornament of the commonwealth, almost killed by a band of slaves, while he was standing by me; and in that throng C. Vibienus, a senator, a man of the highest worth, who was there together with him, was so mauled that he lost his life. And so, when did that dagger of his, the one he had received from Catiline, ever afterward rest? It was aimed at me; I would not let you be exposed to it for my sake; it lay in wait for Pompey; it stained the Appian Way, the monument of his own name, with the murder of Papirius; this same dagger, after a long interval, was turned again upon me; lately indeed, as you know, it nearly finished me near the Regia.

vidi enim, vidi hunc ipsum Q. Hortensium, lumen et ornamentum rei publicae, paene interfici servorum manu, cum mihi adesset; qua in turba C. Vibienus senator, vir optimus, cum hoc cum esset una, ita est mulcatus ut vitam amiserit. itaque quando illius postea sica illa quam a Catilina acceperat conquievit? haec intenta nobis est, huic ego vos obici pro me non sum passus, haec insidiata Pompeio est, haec viam Appiam, monumentum sui nominis, nece Papiri cruentavit, haec eadem longo intervallo conversa rursus est in me; nuper quidem, ut scitis, me ad regiam paene confecit.

What was there like this in Milo? His whole violence was always to this end: that P. Clodius, since he could not be dragged into court, should not hold the state in his grip, crushed by force. Had Milo wished to kill him, what great occasions there were, and how often, and how splendid! Could he not have avenged himself lawfully, when he was defending his house and his household gods with Clodius storming them? Could he not, when an excellent citizen and most brave man, his colleague P. Sestius, was wounded? Could he not, when Q. Fabricius, a man of the highest worth, was driven off as he was carrying a law for my recall, and a most cruel slaughter was done in the Forum? Could he not, when the house of L. Caecilius, that most just and brave praetor, was stormed? Could he not, on that day when the law concerning me was passed, when the gathering of all Italy, which my safety had stirred up, would gladly have acknowledged the glory of that deed — so that, even if Milo had done it, the whole community would have claimed the praise as its own?

quid simile Milonis? cuius vis omnis haec semper fuit, ne P. Clodius, cum in iudicium detrahi non posset, vi oppressam civitatem teneret. quem si interficere voluisset, quantae quotiens occasiones, quam praeclarae fuerunt! potuitne, cum domum ac deos penatis suos illo oppugnante defenderet, iure se ulcisci, potuitne civi egregio et viro fortissimo, P. Sestio, conlega suo, volnerato, potuitne Q. Fabricio, viro optimo, cum de reditu meo legem ferret, pulso, crudelissima in foro caede facta, potuitne L. Caecili, iustissimi fortissimique praetoris, oppugnata domo, potuitne illo die quo est lata lex de me, cum totius Italiae concursus, quem mea salus concitarat, facti illius gloriam libens agnovisset, ut, etiam si id Milo fecisset, cuncta civitas eam laudem pro sua vindicaret?

But what a time it was! There was that most illustrious and brave man, the consul, an enemy of Clodius, P. Lentulus, the avenger of that man’s crime, the champion of the Senate, the defender of your will, the patron of the public consensus, the restorer of my safety; seven praetors, eight tribunes of the plebs, his adversaries and my defenders; Cn. Pompey, the author and leader of my recall, that man’s enemy, whose opinion — most weighty and most distinguished — the whole Senate followed concerning my safety, who exhorted the Roman people, who, when he had passed a decree about me at Capua, himself gave the signal to all Italy, eager and imploring his protection, to flock to Rome for my restoration; in short, the hatred of all the citizens blazed against him out of longing for me, so that whoever had then made an end of him would have been thought of not in terms of impunity, but of rewards.

at quod erat tempus? clarissimus et fortissimus vir consul, inimicus Clodio, P. Lentulus, ultor sceleris illius, propugnator senatus, defensor vestrae voluntatis, patronus publici consensus, restitutor salutis meae; septem praetores, octo tribuni plebei illius adversarii, defensores mei; Cn. Pompeius, auctor et dux mei reditus, illius hostis, cuius sententiam senatus omnis de salute mea gravissimam et ornatissimam secutus est, qui populum Romanum est cohortatus; qui cum decretum de me Capuae fecisset, ipse cunctae Italiae cupienti et eius fidem imploranti signum dedit ut ad me restituendum Romam concurreret; omnium denique in illum odia civium ardebant desiderio mei, quem qui tum interemisset, non de impunitate eius, sed de praemiis cogitaretur.

Yet then Milo held himself in check, and summoned P. Clodius to trial twice, to violence never. What? When Milo was a private citizen and a defendant, with P. Clodius prosecuting him before the people, when an attack was made on Cn. Pompey as he was speaking for Milo, what an opportunity there was then — not only an opportunity but a reason — for crushing that man! Lately, indeed, when M. Antonius had brought the highest hope of safety to all good men, and that most noble young man had most bravely taken up the gravest part of the commonwealth’s burden, and held that beast already snared, as it tried to slip the nooses of the court — what an opening, what a moment that was, immortal gods! When the man hid himself, fleeing, in the darkness of a staircase, what a great thing it would have been for Milo to make an end of that pestilence with no odium to himself, and to the very greatest glory of M. Antonius!

tum se Milo continuit et P. Clodium in iudicium bis, ad vim numquam vocavit. quid? privato Milone et reo ad populum accusante P. Clodio, cum in Cn. Pompeium pro Milone dicentem impetus factus est, quae tum non modo occasio sed etiam causa illius opprimendi fuit? nuper vero cum M. Antonius summam spem salutis bonis omnibus attulisset gravissimamque adulescens nobilissimus rei publicae partem fortissime suscepisset, atque illam beluam, iudici laqueos declinantem, iam inretitam teneret, qui locus, quod tempus illud, di immortales, fuit! cum se ille fugiens in scalarum tenebras abdidisset, magnum Miloni fuit conficere illam pestem nulla sua invidia, M. vero Antoni maxima gloria?

What? At the elections on the Campus, how many times was the chance there! When that man had burst into the voting-enclosures, had arranged for swords to be drawn and stones to be thrown, and then, suddenly terrified at the look on Milo’s face, fled toward the Tiber, while you and all good men were offering up prayers that Milo might be pleased to use his valour. The man, then, whom Milo would not kill with everyone’s gratitude — did he wish to kill him to the complaint of some? The man whom he did not dare kill rightly, in the right place, at the right time, with impunity — did he not hesitate to kill wrongly, in an unfavourable place, at the wrong time, at the risk of his own life?

quid? comitiis in campo quotiens potestas fuit! cum ille in saepta inrupisset, gladios destringendos, lapides iaciendos curasset, dein subito voltu Milonis perterritus fugeret ad Tiberim, vos et omnes boni vota faceretis ut Miloni uti virtute sua liberet. quem igitur cum omnium gratia noluit, hunc voluit cum aliquorum querela, quem iure, quem loco, quem tempore, quem impune non est ausus, hunc iniuria, iniquo loco, alieno tempore, periculo capitis non dubitavit occidere?

Especially, gentlemen, when a contest for the highest office and the day of the elections were close at hand, at which time — for I know how timid ambition is, and how great and how anxious is the desire for the consulship — we fear everything, not only the things that can be openly censured but even those that can be secretly imagined; we shudder at a rumour, a tale false, fabricated, trivial; we watch the faces and the eyes of all. For there is nothing so soft, so tender, so fragile or so pliable as the goodwill and the feeling of the citizens toward us, who are not only angry at the misconduct of candidates, but often grow fastidious even at deeds rightly done.

praesertim, iudices, cum honoris amplissimi contentio et dies comitiorum subesset, quo quidem tempore—scio enim quam timida sit ambitio quantaque et quam sollicita sit cupiditas consulatus —omnia non modo quae reprehendi palam sed etiam quae obscure cogitari possunt timemus, rumorem, fabulam falsam, fictam, levem perhorrescimus, ora omnium atque oculos intuemur. nihil est enim tam molle, tam tenerum, tam aut fragile aut flexibile quam voluntas erga nos sensusque civium, qui non modo improbitati irascuntur candidatorum sed etiam in recte factis saepe fastidiunt.

Did Milo, then, setting before himself this hoped-for and longed-for day of the Campus, come to those august auspices of the centuries with bloody hands, parading and confessing his crime and his outrage? How incredible this is in him — how, in Clodius, the same thing is not to be doubted, when he supposed that, with Milo killed, he himself would reign! And what — for here is the very head of audacity, gentlemen — who does not know that the greatest enticement to wrongdoing is the hope of impunity? In which of the two, then, was this? In Milo, who even now is a defendant for a deed either glorious or at any rate necessary, or in Clodius, who had so despised the courts and their penalties that nothing pleased him which was either permitted by nature’s law or allowed by the laws of men?

hunc igitur diem campi speratum atque exoptatum sibi proponens Milo, cruentis manibus scelus et facinus prae se ferens et confitens ad illa augusta centuriarum auspicia veniebat? quam hoc non credibile est in hoc, quam idem in Clodio non dubitandum, qui se ipse interfecto Milone regnaturum putaret! quid? quod caput est audaciae, iudices, quis ignorat maximam inlecebram esse peccandi impunitatis spem? in utro igitur haec fuit? in Milone qui etiam nunc reus est facti aut praeclari aut certe necessarii, an in Clodio qui ita iudicia poenamque contempserat ut eum nihil delectaret quod aut per naturam fas esset aut per leges liceret?

But why do I argue, why do I dispute further? I appeal to you, Q. Petilius, the best and bravest of citizens; I call you to witness, M. Cato, you whom a kind of divine chance has given me as jurors. You heard from M. Favonius that Clodius had said to him — and you heard it while Clodius was alive — that Milo would die within three days. Three days after he had said it, the thing was done. When that man did not hesitate to disclose what he was planning, can you hesitate as to what he did?

sed quid ego argumentor, quid plura disputo? te, Q. Petili, appello, optimum et fortissimum civem; te, M. Cato, testor, quos mihi divina quaedam sors dedit iudices. vos ex M. Favonio audistis Clodium sibi dixisse, et audistis vivo Clodio, periturum Milonem triduo. post diem tertium gesta res est quam dixerat. cum ille non dubitarit aperire quid cogitaret, vos potestis dubitare quid fecerit?

How, then, did the day not catch Clodius unawares? I have just said. There was no trouble in knowing the fixed sacrifices of the dictator of Lanuvium. He saw that Milo must of necessity set out for Lanuvium on the very day he did set out: and so he forestalled him. But on what day? The day on which, as I said before, there was a most frenzied public meeting, stirred up by his own hireling tribune of the plebs — a day, a meeting, a clamour that he would never have left, had he not been hastening to a premeditated crime. So for him there was not even a reason for the journey — there was, indeed, a reason to stay; for Milo there was no possibility of staying, and for setting out not only a reason but a necessity. What if, just as that man knew Milo would be on the road that day, so Milo could not even suspect the same of Clodius?

quem ad modum igitur eum dies non fefellit? dixi equidem modo. dictatoris Lanuvini stata sacrificia nosse negoti nihil erat. vidit necesse esse Miloni proficisci Lanuvium illo ipso quo est profectus die: itaque antevertit. at quo die? quo, ut ante dixi, fuit insanissima contio ab ipsius mercennario tribuno plebis concitata: quem diem ille, quam contionem, quos clamores, nisi ad cogitatum facinus approperaret, numquam reliquisset. ergo illi ne causa quidem itineris, etiam causa manendi; Miloni manendi nulla facultas, exeundi non causa solum sed etiam necessitas fuit. quid si, ut ille scivit Milonem fore eo die in via, sic Clodium Milo ne suspicari quidem potuit?

First I ask how he could have known it — a question you cannot put in the same way about Clodius. For even if Clodius had asked no one but T. Patina, his closest friend, he could have learned that on that very day the flamen had to be nominated by Milo, the dictator, at Lanuvium. But there were a great many others from whom he could have learned it most easily: all the people of Lanuvium, of course. From whom did Milo inquire about Clodius’s return? Grant that he did inquire — see what I concede to you — grant that he even bribed a slave, as my friend Q. Arrius said. Read the testimony of your own witnesses. C. Causinius Schola of Interamna, Clodius’s closest friend and companion, testified that P. Clodius meant to stay that day at his Alban villa, but that word came to him suddenly that the architect Cyrus had died, and so on the instant he determined to set out for Rome. C. Clodius, likewise a companion of P. Clodius, said the same.

primum quaero qui id scire potuerit? quod vos idem in Clodio quaerere non potestis. Vt enim neminem alium nisi T. Patinam, familiarissimum suum, rogasset, scire potuit illo ipso die Lanuvi a dictatore Milone prodi flaminem necesse esse. sed erant permulti alii ex quibus id facillime scire posset: omnes scilicet Lanuvini. Milo de Clodi reditu unde quaesivit? quaesierit sane —videte quid vobis largiar—servum etiam, ut Q. Arrius, amicus meus, dixit, corruperit. legite testimonia testium vestrorum. dixit C. Causinius schola, Interamnanus, familiarissimus et idem comes Clodi, P. Clodium illo die in Albano mansurum fuisse, sed subito ei esse nuntiatum Cyrum architectum esse mortuum, itaque repente Romam constituisse proficisci. dixit hoc item comes P. Clodi, C. Clodius.

See, gentlemen, how much these testimonies have settled. First, Milo is certainly cleared of having set out with the intention of lying in wait for Clodius on the road: for, on this showing, Clodius was not going to fall in with him at all. Next — for I see no reason not to plead my own business too — you know, gentlemen, that there were men who, in urging this very bill, said that the murder was done by Milo’s hand, but by the design of someone greater. Plainly it was me whom those abject and ruined men were portraying as a brigand and an assassin. They lie prostrate, by their own witnesses, who deny that Clodius would have returned to Rome that day had he not heard about Cyrus. I breathed again; I was set free; I do not fear that I should seem to have planned a thing which I could not even have suspected.

videte, iudices, quantae res his testimoniis sint confectae. primum certe liberatur Milo non eo consilio profectus esse ut insidiaretur in via Clodio: quippe, si ille obvius ei futurus omnino non erat. deinde —non enim video cur non meum quoque agam negotium—scitis, iudices, fuisse qui in hac rogatione suadenda diceret Milonis manu caedem esse factam, consilio vero maioris alicuius. me videlicet latronem ac sicarium abiecti homines et perditi describebant. iacent suis testibus qui Clodium negant eo die Romam, nisi de Cyro audisset, fuisse rediturum. respiravi, liberatus sum; non vereor ne, quod ne suspicari quidem potuerim, videar id cogitasse.

Now I will pursue the rest; for this occurs to me: so then not even Clodius was thinking of an ambush, since he meant to stay at his Alban villa. Yes — if he had not been going to leave the villa for murder. For I see that the man who is said to have brought word of Cyrus’s death brought no such word, but rather that Milo was drawing near. For what news could he bring of Cyrus, whom Clodius, as he was setting out from Rome, had left dying? I sealed his will along with him, I was present; but he had made his will openly, and had named both Clodius his heir and me. The man whom he had left, the day before, at the third hour, gasping out his life — was it only the next day, at the tenth hour, that he was finally being told of his death?

nunc persequar cetera; nam occurrit illud: igitur ne Clodius quidem de insidiis cogitavit, quoniam fuit in Albano mansurus. si quidem exiturus ad caedem e villa non fuisset. video enim illum qui dicatur de Cyri morte nuntiasse non id nuntiasse, sed Milonem appropinquare. nam quid de Cyro nuntiaret quem Clodius Roma proficiscens reliquerat morientem? testamentum simul obsignavi, una fui; testamentum autem palam fecerat et illum heredem et me scripserat. quem pridie hora tertia animam efflantem reliquisset, eum mortuum postridie hora decima denique ei nuntiabatur?

Come, suppose it was so: what reason was there for him to hasten to Rome, to throw himself into the night? What was there in his being heir that called for haste? First, there was no reason why haste was needed; and then, if there were, what, pray, was there that he could gain that night and lose if he came to Rome the next morning? And just as a nightly arrival at the city was for him to be avoided rather than sought, so for Milo, since he was the ambusher — if he knew that Clodius would approach the city by night — there was reason to lie in wait and wait for him.

age, sit ita factum: quae causa fuit cur Romam properaret, cur in noctem se coniceret? quid adferebat festinationis quod heres erat? primum nihil erat cur properato opus esset; deinde si quid esset, quid tandem erat quod ea nocte consequi posset, amitteret autem, si postridie Romam mane venisset? atqui ut illi nocturnus ad urbem adventus vitandus potius quam expetendus fuit, sic Miloni, cum insidiator esset, si illum ad urbem noctu accessurum sciebat, subsidendum atque exspectandum fuit.

He would have killed him by night: he would have killed him in a treacherous place full of brigands. No one would have disbelieved him as he denied it, when everyone wishes him safe even as he confesses. The very place would first have borne the charge — that haunt and harbour of brigands; then the dumb solitude would not have informed against Milo, nor the blind night exposed him; next, many men whom Clodius had abused, robbed, driven from their goods, and many who feared the same, would have fallen under suspicion; in short, all Etruria would have been summoned as defendant.

noctu occidisset: insidioso et pleno latronum in loco occidisset. nemo ei neganti non credidisset quem esse omnes salvum etiam confitentem volunt. sustinuisset crimen primum ipse ille latronum occultator et receptor locus, tum neque muta solitudo indicasset neque caeca nox ostendisset Milonem; deinde multi ab illo violati, spoliati, bonis expulsi, multi haec etiam timentes in suspicionem caderent, tota denique rea citaretur Etruria.

And on that very day, Clodius, returning from Aricia, certainly turned aside to his place at the Alban villa. Even if Milo knew that he had been at Aricia, still he ought to have suspected that, even if Clodius wished to return to Rome that day, he would turn aside to his own villa, which bordered the road. Why did he not meet him beforehand, to keep that man from settling in at the villa, nor lie in wait in the place to which Clodius would come by night?

atque illo die certe Aricia rediens devertit Clodius ad se in Albanum. quod ut sciret Milo illum Ariciae fuisse, suspicari tamen debuit eum, etiam si Romam illo die reverti vellet, ad villam suam quae viam tangeret deversurum. cur nec ante occurrit ne ille in villa resideret, nec eo in loco subsedit quo ille noctu venturus esset?

I see, gentlemen, that thus far everything is consistent: that it was even to Milo’s advantage for Clodius to live, while to Clodius, for the things he had set his heart on, the death of Milo was most to be wished; that Clodius’s hatred toward Milo was most bitter, Milo’s toward Clodius none at all; that Clodius’s habit was a perpetual one of offering violence, Milo’s only of repelling it; that death was threatened against Milo by Clodius and proclaimed openly, while nothing of the kind was ever heard from Milo; that the day of Milo’s setting-out was known to Clodius, while Clodius’s return was unknown to Milo; that Milo’s journey was a necessary one, Clodius’s even rather uncalled-for; that Milo had openly announced he would leave that day, while Clodius had concealed that he would return that day; that Milo had changed his plan in nothing, while Clodius had invented a reason for changing his; that Milo, if he were lying in wait, had to wait through the night near the city, while Clodius, even if he did not fear Milo, still had to dread approaching the city by night.

video adhuc constare, iudices, omnia: Miloni etiam utile fuisse Clodium vivere, illi ad ea quae concupierat optatissimum interitum Milonis; odium fuisse illius in hunc acerbissimum, nullum huius in illum; consuetudinem illius perpetuam in vi inferenda, huius tantum in repellenda; mortem ab illo Miloni denuntiatam et praedicatam palam, nihil umquam auditum ex Milone; profectionis huius diem illi notum, reditum illius huic ignotum fuisse; huius iter necessarium, illius etiam potius alienum; hunc prae se tulisse se illo die exiturum, illum eo die se dissimulasse rediturum; hunc nullius rei mutasse consilium, illum causam mutandi consili finxisse; huic, si insidiaretur, noctem prope urbem exspectandam, illi, etiam si hunc non timeret, tamen accessum ad urbem nocturnum fuisse metuendum.

Let us now look at what is the head of the matter: which of the two, in the end, that very place where they met was better suited for laying an ambush. Is this, gentlemen, even to be doubted, or pondered any longer? Before Clodius’s estate — an estate where, because of those mad foundation-works, a good thousand able-bodied men were easily kept busy — did Milo think that from his adversary’s raised and lofty ground he would have the upper hand, and for that reason choose that place above all for a fight? Or was he rather waited for in that place by the man who, on the strength of the ground itself, had planned to make the attack? The thing speaks for itself, gentlemen, and that always carries the greatest weight.

videamus nunc id quod caput est, locus ad insidias ille ipse ubi congressi sunt utri tandem fuerit aptior. id vero, iudices, etiam dubitandum et diutius cogitandum est? ante fundum Clodi quo in fundo propter insanas illas substructiones facile hominum mille versabatur valentium, edito adversarii atque excelso loco superiorem se fore putabat Milo, et ob eam rem eum locum ad pugnam potissimum elegerat, an in eo loco est potius exspectatus ab eo qui ipsius loci spe facere impetum cogitarat? res loquitur ipsa, iudices, quae semper valet plurimum.

If you were not hearing these things told, gentlemen, but seeing them painted, even so it would be plain which of the two was the plotter, which had no harm in mind — when the one was riding in a carriage, wrapped in a travelling-cloak, his wife seated at his side. Which of these was not the very picture of encumbrance: the dress, or the vehicle, or the companion? What could be less ready for a fight than a man tangled in his cloak, hampered by his carriage, all but pinned down by his wife? — Now look at the other: first, leaving his country house, suddenly. Why? In the evening. What need of that? Slowly. How does that fit, especially at that hour? He turns aside to Pompey’s villa. To see Pompey? He knew he was at Alsium. To inspect the villa? He had been in it a thousand times. What, then, was it? Delay and stalling: he would not quit the spot until Milo came up.

si haec non gesta audiretis, sed picta videretis, tamen appareret uter esset insidiator, uter nihil mali cogitaret, cum alter veheretur in raeda paenulatus, una sederet uxor. quid horum non impeditissimum? vestitus an vehiculum an comes? quid minus promptum ad pugnam, cum paenula inretitus, raeda impeditus, uxore paene constrictus esset?— videte nunc illum, primum egredientem e villa, subito: cur? vesperi: quid necesse est? tarde: qui convenit, praesertim id temporis? devertit in villam Pompei. Pompeium ut videret? sciebat in Alsiensi esse; villam ut perspiceret? miliens in ea fuerat. quid ergo erat? mora et tergiversatio: dum hic veniret, locum relinquere noluit.

Come now, compare the journey of the unencumbered bandit with Milo’s baggage. Always before, the one travelled with his wife; this time, without her. Never except in a carriage; this time, on horseback. Greek hangers-on for company wherever he went, even when he was hurrying to his Etruscan camp; this time, no triflers in his retinue. Milo, who never did so, was on this occasion taking along, as it chanced, his wife’s musician-boys and a flock of maidservants; the other, who always led with him whores, always catamites, always harlots, this time had no one — unless you would say it was man picked out, man by man. Why, then, was he beaten? Because the traveller is not always killed by the bandit; now and then the bandit too is killed by the traveller — because, though Clodius came prepared against men unprepared, Clodius himself was a woman who had fallen among men.

age nunc iter expediti latronis cum Milonis impedimentis comparate. semper ille antea cum uxore, tum sine ea; numquam nisi in raeda, tum in equo; comites Graeculi, quocumque ibat, etiam cum in castra Etrusca properabat, tum nugarum in comitatu nihil. Milo qui numquam, tum casu pueros symphoniacos uxoris ducebat et ancillarum greges; ille qui semper secum scorta, semper exoletos, semper lupas duceret, tum neminem, nisi ut virum a viro lectum esse diceres. cur igitur victus est? quia non semper viator a latrone, non numquam etiam latro a viatore occiditur; quia, quamquam paratus in imparatos Clodius, ipse Clodius tamen mulier inciderat in viros.

Nor indeed was Milo ever so unprepared against him as not to be very nearly prepared enough. He always reckoned both how much it mattered to P. Clodius that he himself should perish, and how deeply that man hated him, and how much that man dared. And so, knowing his own life set up for the highest prizes and all but knocked down at auction, he never threw it into danger without an escort, without a guard. Add the chances; add the uncertain outcomes of fights and the impartiality of Mars, who often, when a man is already stripping and exulting, overturns him and strikes him down by the very man he had cast off; add the blundering of a commander dined, drunk, and yawning, who, when he had left an enemy cut off at his rear, gave no thought to that enemy’s last companions; and falling among them, kindled with rage and despairing of their master’s life, he stuck fast in the punishment which faithful slaves exacted from him for their master’s life.

nec vero sic erat umquam non paratus Milo contra illum ut non satis fere esset paratus. semper ipse et quantum interesset P. Clodii se interire et quanto illi odio esset et quantum ille auderet cogitabat. quam ob rem vitam suam quam maximis praemiis propositam et paene addictam sciebat numquam in periculum sine praesidio et sine custodia proiciebat. adde casus, adde incertos exitus pugnarum Martemque communem, qui saepe spoliantem iam et exsultantem evertit et perculit ab abiecto; adde inscitiam pransi, poti, oscitantis ducis qui, cum a tergo hostem interclusum reliquisset, nihil de eius extremis comitibus cogitavit, in quos incensos ira vitamque domini desperantis cum incidisset, haesit in eis poenis quas ab eo servi fideles pro domini vita expetiverunt.

Why, then, did Milo set them free? Because, no doubt, he feared they might inform, might be unable to bear the pain, might be forced by torture to confess that P. Clodius had been killed by Milo’s slaves on the Appian Way. What need of the rack? What are you asking? Whether he killed him? He killed him. Lawfully, or unlawfully? That is nothing to the torturer: for on the rack the inquiry is into the deed, in court into the law. What, then, must be inquired into in the case, let us pursue here; what you wish to find out by torture, that we confess. But if you ask why he set them free, rather than why he rewarded them too little handsomely, you do not know how to fault a deed done by an enemy.

cur igitur eos manu misit? metuebat scilicet ne indicaretur, ne dolorem perferre non possent, ne tormentis cogerentur occisum esse a servis Milonis in Appia via P. Clodium confiteri. quid opus est terrore? quid quaeris? occideritne? occidit. iure an iniuria? nihil ad tortorem: facti enim in eculeo quaestio est, iuris in iudicio. quod igitur in causa quaerendum est, id agamus hic; quod tormentis inveniri vis, id fatemur. manu vero cur miserit, si id potius quaeris quam cur parum amplis adfecerit praemiis, nescis inimici factum reprehendere.

For this same man who has always said everything firmly and bravely, M. Cato, said — and said it in a turbulent public meeting, which was nonetheless calmed by his authority — that those who had defended their master’s life were most worthy not only of freedom but of every reward. For what reward is great enough for slaves so kindly, so good, so faithful, through whom he lives? And yet even that is not worth so much as this: that through these same men he did not glut the mind and eyes of a most cruel enemy with his own blood and wounds. Had he not freed them, the preservers of their master, the avengers of crime, the defenders against murder would have had to be handed over even to the torture. But in the midst of these troubles he has nothing that he bears with less distress than this: that, even if anything should happen to himself, the deserved reward has nonetheless been paid them in full.

dixit enim hic idem qui semper omnia constanter et fortiter, M. Cato, et dixit in turbulenta contione, quae tamen huius auctoritate placata est, non libertate solum sed etiam omnibus praemiis dignissimos fuisse qui domini caput defendissent. quod enim praemium satis magnum est tam benevolis, tam bonis, tam fidelibus servis, propter quos vivit? etsi id quidem non tanti est quam quod propter eosdem non sanguine et volneribus suis crudelissimi inimici mentem oculosque satiavit. quos nisi manu misisset, tormentis etiam dedendi fuerunt conservatores domini, ultores sceleris, defensores necis. hic vero nihil habet in his malis quod minus moleste ferat quam, etiam si quid ipsi accidat, esse tamen illis meritum praemium persolutum.

But the examinations press hard upon Milo — those held just now in the Hall of Liberty. Of whose slaves? You ask? Of P. Clodius’s. Who demanded them? Appius. Who produced them? Appius. From where? From Appius. Good gods! What could be done more harshly? Clodius came nearer to the gods than when he had broken in upon their very presence, since his death is now inquired into as though sacred rites had been violated. And yet our forefathers refused to allow examination against a master, not because the truth could not be found, but because it seemed shameful, and sadder to the masters than death itself. When examination is made of a prosecutor’s slave against the defendant, can the truth be found?

sed quaestiones urgent Milonem, quae sunt habitae nunc in atrio libertatis. quibusnam de servis? rogas? de P. Clodi. quis eos postulavit? Appius. quis produxit? Appius. Vnde? ab Appio. di boni! quid potest agi severius? proxime deos Clodius accessit, propius quam tum cum ad ipsos penetrarat, cuius de morte tamquam de caerimoniis violatis quaeritur. sed tamen maiores nostri in dominum quaeri noluerunt, non quia non posset verum inveniri, sed quia videbatur indignum et dominis morte ipsa tristius: in reum de servo accusatoris cum quaeritur, verum inveniri potest?

Come now, what was the examination, and of what sort? “Here, you, Rufio” — for instance — “mind you do not lie: did Clodius lay a plot against Milo?” “He did”: the cross is certain. “He laid none”: freedom is hoped for. What is surer than such an examination? Men snatched up suddenly for examination are nonetheless kept apart, the rest, and thrown into cells, that no one may speak with them: but these, after they had been a hundred days in the keeping of the prosecutor, were produced by that very prosecutor. What can be said more honest than such an examination, what more uncorrupted?

age vero, quae erat aut qualis quaestio? Heus tu, Rufio, verbi causa, cave sis mentiare: Clodius insidias fecit Miloni? fecit; certa crux. nullas fecit: sperata libertas. quid hac quaestione certius? subito adrepti in quaestionem tamen separantur ceteri et in arcas coniciuntur ne quis cum eis conloqui possit: hi centum dies penes accusatorem cum fuissent ab eo ipso accusatore producti sunt. quid hac quaestione dici potest integrius, quid incorruptius?

But if you do not yet see clearly enough, when the matter itself shines out with so many and so clear arguments and signs — that Milo returned to Rome with a mind pure and whole, stained by no crime, terrified by no fear, undone by no guilty conscience — then recall, by the immortal gods, what was the speed of his return, what his entry into the Forum while the Senate-house was burning, what greatness of spirit, what countenance, what speech. Nor indeed did he commit himself to the people alone, but also to the Senate; nor to the Senate only, but also to the public guards and arms; nor to these only, but to the power of the man to whom the Senate had committed the whole commonwealth, all the manhood of Italy, all the arms of the Roman people. To this man he surely would never have surrendered himself, had he not trusted his own cause — and that to one who was hearing everything, fearing much, suspecting many things, believing some. Great is the force of conscience, gentlemen, and great in both directions: so that those who have committed no wrong feel no fear, while those who have sinned think the penalty forever set before their eyes.

quod si nondum satis cernitis, cum res ipsa tot tam claris argumentis signisque luceat, pura mente atque integra Milonem, nullo scelere imbutum, nullo metu perterritum, nulla conscientia exanimatum Romam revertisse, recordamini, per deos immortalis, quae fuerit celeritas reditus eius, qui ingressus in forum ardente curia, quae magnitudo animi, qui voltus, quae oratio. neque vero se populo solum sed etiam senatui commisit, neque senatui modo sed etiam publicis praesidiis et armis, neque his tantum verum etiam eius potestati cui senatus totam rem publicam, omnem Italiae pubem, cuncta populi Romani arma commiserat: cui numquam se hic profecto tradidisset, nisi causae suae confideret, praesertim omnia audienti, magna metuenti, multa suspicanti, non nulla credenti. Magna vis est conscientiae, iudices, et magna in utramque partem, ut neque timeant qui nihil commiserint et poenam semper ante oculos versari putent qui peccarint.

Nor indeed without sure reason was Milo’s cause always approved by the Senate; the wisest of men saw the reasoning of the deed, his presence of mind, the steadfastness of his defence. Or have you forgotten, gentlemen, when the news of Clodius’s death was fresh, the talk and the opinions not only of Milo’s enemies but even of some who knew no better? They kept saying he would not return to Rome.

neque vero sine ratione certa causa Milonis semper a senatu probata est; videbant sapientissimi homines facti rationem, praesentiam animi, defensionis constantiam. an vero obliti estis, iudices, recenti illo nuntio necis Clodianae non modo inimicorum Milonis sermones et opiniones sed non nullorum etiam imperitorum? negabant eum Romam esse rediturum.

For if he had done it in an angry and excited spirit — so as to butcher his enemy in the heat of hatred — they supposed he had reckoned the death of P. Clodius worth so much that he would bear exile from his country with an even mind, now that he had filled his hatred with the blood of his enemy; or if he had wished by that man’s death to free his country, they thought a brave man would not hesitate, having brought safety to the Roman people at his own peril, to yield with an even mind to the laws, to carry off with him everlasting glory, and to leave for your enjoyment what he himself had preserved. Many even talked of Catiline and those monstrous portents: he will break out, he will seize some position, he will make war upon his country. Wretched at times are the citizens who have deserved supremely well of the commonwealth, in whom men not only forget the most splendid deeds but even suspect wicked ones!

sive enim illud animo irato ac percito fecisset ut incensus odio trucidaret inimicum, arbitrabantur eum tanti mortem P. Clodi putasse ut aequo animo patria careret, cum sanguine inimici explesset odium suum; sive etiam illius morte patriam liberare voluisset, non dubitaturum fortem virum quin, cum suo periculo salutem populo Romano attulisset, cederet aequo animo legibus, secum auferret gloriam sempiternam, vobis haec fruenda relinqueret quae ipse servasset. multi etiam Catilinam atque illa portenta loquebantur: erumpet, occupabit aliquem locum, bellum patriae faciet. miseros interdum civis optime de re publica meritos, in quibus homines non modo res praeclarissimas obliviscuntur sed etiam nefarias suspicantur!

Those things, then, were false — things that would certainly have proved true, had Milo committed anything he could not honourably and truthfully defend. What of the charges afterward heaped upon him, which would have crushed the conscience even of moderate offences — how he bore them, immortal gods! Bore them? No, rather how he despised them and counted them as nothing, things that neither a guilty man, however great his spirit, nor an innocent one, unless a most brave man, could have disregarded! Word was given out that a great quantity of shields, swords, javelins, even of bridles, could be seized; they said there was no quarter in the city, no back-alley, in which a house had not been hired for Milo; that arms had been carried down the Tiber to his villa at Ocriculum; that his house on the Capitoline slope was stuffed with shields, all of it full of firebrands made ready to burn the city: these things were not only reported, but almost believed, nor were they rejected until they were investigated.

ergo illa falsa fuerunt quae certe vera exstitissent, si Milo admisisset aliquid quod non posset honeste vereque defendere. quid? quae postea sunt in eum congesta, quae quamvis etiam mediocrium delictorum conscientiam perculissent, ut sustinuit, di immortales! sustinuit? immo vero ut contempsit ac pro nihilo putavit, quae neque maximo animo nocens neque innocens nisi fortissimus vir neglegere potuisset! scutorum, gladiorum, pilorum, frenorum etiam multitudo deprehendi posse indicabatur; nullum in urbe vicum, nullum angiportum esse dicebant in quo non Miloni conducta esset domus; arma in villam Ocriculanam devecta Tiberi, domus in clivo Capitolino scutis referta, plena omnia malleolorum ad urbis incendia comparatorum: haec non delata solum, sed paene credita, nec ante repudiata sunt quam quaesita.

I praised, for my part, the incredible diligence of Cn. Pompey; but I will say, gentlemen, what I think. They are forced to hear too many things, and can do no otherwise, those to whom the whole commonwealth has been committed. Why, even a certain Licinius had to be heard, some sacrificer or other from the Circus Maximus, who said that Milo’s slaves, having got drunk at his house, confessed to him that they had conspired to murder Cn. Pompey, and that afterward he himself had been run through with a sword by one of them, lest he inform. Word is taken to Pompey in his gardens; I am summoned among the first; on the advice of his friends he lays the matter before the Senate. I could not but be undone by fear, with so grave a suspicion hanging over that guardian of mine and of my country; yet I marvelled all the same that a sacrificer should be believed, the confession of slaves heard, a wound in the side — which looked like a pin-prick — accepted as the thrust of a gladiator.

laudabam equidem incredibilem diligentiam Cn. Pompei, sed dicam, ut sentio, iudices. nimis multa audire coguntur neque aliter facere possunt ei quibus commissa tota res publica est. quin etiam fuit audiendus popa Licinius nescio qui de circo maximo, servos Milonis apud se ebrios factos sibi confessos se de interficiendo Cn. Pompeio coniurasse, dein postea se gladio percussum esse ab uno de illis ne indicaret. Pompeio nuntiatur in hortos; arcessor in primis; de amicorum sententia rem defert ad senatum. non poteram in illius mei patriaeque custodis tanta suspicione non metu exanimari, sed mirabar tamen credi popae, confessionem servorum audiri, volnus in latere quod acu punctum videretur pro ictu gladiatoris probari.

But, as I understand it, Pompey was guarding against danger rather than fearing it — not only against the things that were to be feared, but against everything, lest you should fear anything. The house of C. Caesar, that most illustrious and most brave man, was reported to have been besieged for many hours of the night: no one had heard of it in so frequented a place, no one had felt it; yet it was reported. I could not suspect Cn. Pompey, a man of surpassing virtue, of being timorous; no diligence undertaken for the whole commonwealth did I think excessive. In a most crowded Senate, lately on the Capitol, a senator was found to say that Milo was carrying a weapon. He stripped himself in that most sacred temple, since the life of such a citizen and such a man could win no credence, so that, with himself silent, the matter itself might speak. All these things were found to be falsely and spitefully invented; and yet even now Milo is feared.

verum, ut intellego, cavebat magis Pompeius quam timebat, non ea solum quae timenda erant, sed omnia, ne vos aliquid timeretis. oppugnata domus C. Caesaris, clarissimi ac fortissimi viri, multas noctis horas nuntiabatur: nemo audierat tam celebri loco, nemo senserat; tamen audiebatur. non poteram Cn. Pompeium, praestantissima virtute virum, timidum suspicari; diligentiam pro tota re publica suscepta nimiam nullam putabam. frequentissimo senatu nuper in Capitolio senator inventus est qui Milonem cum telo esse diceret. nudavit se in sanctissimo templo, quoniam vita talis et civis et viri fidem non faciebat, ut eo tacente res ipsa loqueretur. omnia false atque invidiose ficta comperta sunt: tametsi metuitur etiam nunc Milo.

It is no longer this Clodian charge that we fear, but your suspicions, Cn. Pompey — you I address, and in such a voice that you may be able to hear me — your suspicions, I say, we shudder at. If you fear Milo, if you think that this man either now plots wickedly against your life or has at some time contrived something, if the levy throughout Italy — as some of your recruiting officers kept repeating — if these arms, if the Capitoline cohorts, if the sentries, the watches, the chosen young men who guard your person and your house, are armed against an onslaught of Milo’s, and all of that has been arrayed, made ready, and aimed against this one man — then surely great force is judged to be in him, an incredible spirit, the strength and resources of no single man, if indeed against this one man both a most outstanding general has been chosen and the whole commonwealth has been put under arms.

non iam hoc Clodianum crimen timemus, sed tuas, Cn. Pompei—te enim appello et ea voce ut me exaudire possis —tuas, inquam, suspiciones perhorrescimus. si Milonem times, si hunc de tua vita nefarie aut nunc cogitare aut molitum aliquando aliquid putas, si Italiae dilectus, ut non nulli conquisitores tui dictitarunt, si haec arma, si Capitolinae cohortes, si excubiae, si vigiliae, si delecta iuventus quae tuum corpus domumque custodit contra Milonis impetum armata est, atque illa omnia in hunc unum constituta, parata, intenta sunt, magna in hoc certe vis et incredibilis animus et non unius viri vires atque opes iudicantur, si quidem in hunc unum et praestantissimus dux electus et tota res publica armata est.

But who does not understand that all the sick and tottering parts of the commonwealth were committed to you, that with these arms you might heal and steady them? And if Milo had been given the chance, he would surely have proved to you yourself that no man was ever dearer to another than you to him; that he had never shunned any danger for your standing; that against that foulest plague itself he had very often striven for your glory; that his tribunate had been steered by your counsels toward my safety, which had been most dear to you; that he had afterward been defended by you in a peril touching his life, aided in his canvass for the praetorship; that he had always hoped to have two closest friends, you by your kindness, me by his own. And if he could not prove this — if that suspicion had so deeply lodged in you that it could in no way be torn out, if, in short, Italy were never to find rest from the levy, the city from arms, without Milo’s destruction — then he, doubtless, would not have hesitated to quit his country, born and bred as he is to such a course; but he would still, Magnus, call you to witness beforehand, as even now he does.

sed quis non intellegit omnis tibi rei publicae partis aegras et labantis, ut eas his armis sanares et confirmares, esse commissas? quod si locus Miloni datus esset, probasset profecto tibi ipsi, neminem umquam hominem homini cariorem fuisse quam te sibi; nullum se umquam periculum pro tua dignitate fugisse, cum illa ipsa taeterrima peste se saepissime pro tua gloria contendisse; tribunatum suum ad salutem meam, quae tibi carissima fuisset, consiliis tuis gubernatum; se a te postea defensum in periculo capitis, adiutum in petitione praeturae; duos se habere semper amicissimos sperasse, te tuo beneficio, me suo. quae si non probaret, si tibi ita penitus inhaesisset ista suspicio ut nullo evelli posset modo, si denique Italia a dilectu, urbs ab armis sine Milonis clade numquam esset conquietura, ne ipse haud dubitans cessisset patria, is qui ita natus est et ita consuevit; te, Magne, tamen ante testaretur, quod nunc etiam facit.

You see how varied and changeable is the course of life, how wandering and rolling is fortune, how great are the betrayals in friendships, how the pretences are fitted to the moment, how great in dangers are the flights of those closest to us, how great the cowardice. There will be — there will surely be — that time, and that day will one day dawn, when you, with your own fortunes safe, as I hope, but perhaps amid some upheaval of the common times — and how often that happens we who have known it ought to know — will long for the goodwill of your most faithful friend, the loyalty of a most steadfast man, and the greatness of spirit of the bravest man born since the human race began.

vides quam sit varia vitae commutabilisque ratio, quam vaga volubilisque fortuna, quantae infidelitates in amicitiis, quam ad tempus aptae simulationes, quantae in periculis fugae proximorum, quantae timiditates. erit, erit illud profecto tempus et inlucescet ille aliquando dies, cum tu salvis, ut spero, rebus tuis, sed fortasse in motu aliquo communium temporum, qui quam crebro accidat experti scire debemus, et amicissimi benevolentiam et gravissimi hominis fidem et unius post homines natos fortissimi viri magnitudinem animi desideres.

And yet, who would believe this — that Cn. Pompey, most skilled in public law, in the custom of our forefathers, in the commonwealth itself, when the Senate had committed it to him to see that the commonwealth take no harm (and by that one little line the consuls have always been armed enough, even with no arms given them), would, with an army given him, with a levy given him, have awaited a trial in punishing the schemes of a man who by violence was abolishing the very courts? Judgement enough was passed by Pompey, enough, that those charges are falsely heaped upon Milo — the man who carried the law by which, as I think, Milo ought to be acquitted by you, and, as all confess, may lawfully be.

quamquam quis hoc credat, Cn. Pompeium, iuris publici, moris maiorum, rei denique publicae peritissimum, cum senatus ei commiserit ut videret ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet, quo uno versiculo satis armati semper consules fuerunt etiam nullis armis datis, hunc exercitu, hunc dilectu dato, iudicium exspectaturum fuisse in eius consiliis vindicandis qui vi iudicia ipsa tolleret? satis iudicatum est a Pompeio, satis, falso ista conferri in Milonem, qui legem tulit qua, ut ego sentio, Milonem absolvi a vobis oporteret, ut omnes confitentur, liceret.

But that he sits in that place, surrounded by those forces of the public guards, declares plainly enough that he is not bringing terror upon you — for what would less befit him than to compel you to condemn a man on whom he could himself, both by the custom of our forefathers and by his own right, inflict punishment? — but that he is a protection, that you may understand that, against yesterday’s meeting, you are permitted to judge freely as you think.

quod vero in illo loco atque illis publicorum praesidiorum copiis circumfusus sedet, satis declarat se non terrorem inferre vobis—quid enim minus illo dignum quam cogere ut vos eum condemnetis in quem animadvertere ipse et more maiorum et suo iure possit?—, sed praesidio esse, ut intellegatis contra hesternam illam contionem licere vobis quod sentiatis libere iudicare.

Nor indeed, gentlemen, does the Clodian charge move me, nor am I so deranged, so ignorant and devoid of any sense of your feelings, as not to know what you think about the death of Clodius. And as to that, even if I were now unwilling to clear away the charge as I have cleared it, Milo would still be free, with impunity, to cry out openly and to boast with a glorious lie: “I killed him — I killed him: not Spurius Maelius, who, by lightening the corn-supply and at the cost of his own estate, fell under suspicion of aiming at kingship because he seemed to court the plebs too far, nor Tiberius Gracchus, who by sedition abrogated the magistracy of his colleague — whose slayers filled the whole world with the glory of their name — but the man” (for he would dare to say it, since he had freed his country at his own peril) “whose abominable adultery, in the most sacred shrines, the noblest women caught in the act;

nec vero me, iudices, Clodianum crimen movet, nec tam sum demens tamque vestri sensus ignarus atque expers ut nesciam quid de morte Clodi sentiatis. de qua si iam nollem ita diluere crimen ut dilui, tamen impune Miloni palam clamare ac mentiri gloriose liceret: occidi, occidi, non Sp. Maelium qui annona levanda iacturisque rei familiaris, quia nimis amplecti plebem videbatur, in suspicionem incidit regni appetendi, non Ti. Gracchum qui conlegae magistratum per seditionem abrogavit, quorum interfectores implerunt orbem terrarum nominis sui gloria, sed eum— auderet enim dicere, cum patriam periculo suo liberasset— cuius nefandum adulterium in pulvinaribus sanctissimis nobilissimae feminae comprehenderunt;

the man whose punishment the Senate often decreed that the solemn rites must be expiated by; the man whom L. Lucullus, on oath, declared he had discovered, after holding examinations, to have committed wicked debauchery with his own full sister; the man who, by the arms of slaves, drove into exile the citizen whom the Senate, whom the Roman people, whom all nations had judged the preserver of the city and of the citizens’ lives; the man who gave kingdoms, took them away, and parcelled out the whole world among whomever he pleased; the man who, after countless slaughters done in the Forum, drove a citizen of singular virtue and glory home by force and arms; the man to whom nothing was ever forbidden, neither in crime nor in lust; the man who burned the temple of the Nymphs in order to wipe out the public record of the census, stamped upon the public registers;

eum cuius supplicio senatus sollemnis religiones expiandas saepe censuit; eum quem cum sorore germana nefarium stuprum fecisse L. Lucullus iuratus se quaestionibus habitis dixit comperisse; eum qui civem quem senatus, quem populus Romanus, quem omnes gentes urbis ac vitae civium conservatorem iudicarant servorum armis exterminavit; eum qui regna dedit, ademit, orbem terrarum quibuscum voluit partitus est; eum qui plurimis caedibus in foro factis singulari virtute et gloria civem domum vi et armis compulit; eum cui nihil umquam nefas fuit nec in facinore nec in libidine; eum qui aedem nympharum incendit ut memoriam publicam recensionis tabulis publicis impressam exstingueret;

the man, in short, for whom by now there was no law, no civil right, no boundary-mark of property — who sought other men’s estates not by the chicanery of lawsuits, not by unjust claims and pledges, but by camps, by an army, by advancing standards; who tried to drive from their holdings, by arms and camps, not only the Etruscans — for those he utterly despised — but this P. Varius, a most brave and excellent citizen, our juror; who roamed the country houses and gardens of many men with architects and measuring-rods; who had bounded the hope of his holdings only by the Janiculum and the Alps; who, when he could not get a Roman knight of brilliant and bold character, M. Paconius, to sell him an island in the Prilian lake, suddenly hauled timber, lime, rubble, and sand in skiffs onto that island and, with the owner looking on from across the bank, did not hesitate to raise a building on land not his own; who said to this T. Furfanius — what a man, immortal gods! —

eum denique cui iam nulla lex erat, nullum civile ius, nulli possessionum termini, qui non calumnia litium, non iniustis vindiciis ac sacramentis alienos fundos, sed castris, exercitu, signis inferendis petebat; qui non solum Etruscos—eos enim penitus contempserat—sed hunc P. Varium, fortissimum atque optimum civem, iudicem nostrum, pellere possessionibus armis castrisque conatus est, qui cum architectis et decempedis villas multorum hortosque peragrabat, qui Ianiculo et Alpibus spem possessionum terminarat suarum, qui cum ab equite Romano splendido et forti, M. Paconio, non impetrasset, ut sibi insulam in lacu Prilio venderet, repente lintribus in eam insulam materiem, calcem, caementa, harenam convexit dominoque trans ripam inspectante non dubitavit aedificium exstruere in alieno; qui huic T. Furfanio, cui viro, di immortales!—

(for why should I speak of poor little Scantia, why of the young P. Aponius, both of whom he threatened with death unless they yielded him the possession of their gardens?) — but who dared to say to T. Furfanius that, if he did not give him as much money as he demanded, he would carry a corpse into his house, by which scandal a man of such standing would have to be burned up; who threw his brother Appius — a man bound to me by the most faithful goodwill — out of the possession of an estate in his absence; who set about running a wall through his sister’s forecourt, and laying foundations in such a way as not only to deprive his sister of her forecourt but of all entrance and threshold.

quid enim ego de muliercula Scantia, quid de adulescente P. Aponio dicam? quorum utrique mortem est minatus, nisi sibi hortorum possessione cessissent —; sed ausum esse T. Furfanio dicere, si sibi pecuniam quantam posceret non dedisset, mortuum se in domum eius inlaturum, qua invidia huic esset tali viro conflagrandum; qui Appium fratrem, hominem mihi coniunctum fidissima gratia, absentem de possessione fundi deiecit; qui parietem sic per vestibulum sororis instituit ducere, sic agere fundamenta ut sororem non modo vestibulo privaret sed omni aditu et limine.

And yet even these things now seemed bearable, though he rushed alike upon the commonwealth, upon private men, upon those far off, upon those near, upon strangers, upon his own kin; but somehow, by long use, the city’s incredible patience had grown hardened and callous. As for the things that were already at hand and impending — how, pray, could you ever have warded them off, or borne them? Had he gained power — I leave aside the allies, foreign nations, kings, tetrarchs; for you would have prayed that he might hurl himself upon them rather than upon your holdings, your homes, your money: money, do I say? From your children, so help me god, and from your wives he would never have held back his unbridled lusts. Do you think these things are invented — things that lie open, that are known to all, that are established — that he would have enrolled armies of slaves in the city, through whom he might seize the whole commonwealth and the private fortunes of all?

quamquam haec quidem iam tolerabilia videbantur, etsi aequabiliter in rem publicam, in privatos, in longinquos, in propinquos, in alienos, in suos inruebat, sed nescio quo modo usu iam obduruerat et percalluerat civitatis incredibilis patientia: quae vero aderant iam et impendebant, quonam modo ea aut depellere potuissetis aut ferre? imperium ille si nactus esset, omitto socios, exteras nationes, reges, tetrarchas; vota enim faceretis ut in eos se potius immitteret quam in vestras possessiones, vestra tecta, vestras pecunias: pecunias dico? a liberis, me dius fidius, et a coniugibus vestris numquam ille effrenatas suas libidines cohibuisset. fingi haec putatis quae patent, quae nota sunt omnibus, quae tenentur, servorum exercitus illum in urbe conscripturum fuisse, per quos totam rem publicam resque privatas omnium possideret?

Therefore, if, holding a bloody sword, T. Annius were to cry out: “Come, I beg you, and hear me, citizens! I have killed P. Clodius; his frenzies, which we could no longer curb by any laws, by any courts, I have driven back from your throats with this steel and this right hand, so that through me alone right and equity, the laws and liberty, decency and chastity might remain in the state” — would there really be cause to fear how the state would take it? For as it is, who is there who does not approve, who does not praise, who does not both say and feel that T. Annius alone, since the memory of mankind, has done the commonwealth the greatest service, and has filled the Roman people, all Italy, all nations with the highest joy? I cannot judge how great were those ancient joys of the Roman people; yet our age has by now seen many most illustrious victories of the greatest commanders, none of which brought a gladness either so lasting or so great.

quam ob rem si cruentum gladium tenens clamaret T. Annius: adeste, quaeso, atque audite, cives! P. Clodium interfeci, eius furores, quos nullis iam legibus, nullis iudiciis frenare poteramus, hoc ferro et hac dextera a cervicibus vestris reppuli, per me ut unum ius aequitas, leges libertas, pudor pudicitia maneret in civitate, esset vero timendum quonam modo id ferret civitas! nunc enim quis est qui non probet, qui non laudet, qui non unum post hominum memoriam T. Annium plurimum rei publicae profuisse, maxima laetitia populum Romanum, cunctam Italiam, nationes omnis adfecisse et dicat et sentiat? non queo vetera illa populi Romani gaudia quanta fuerint iudicare: multas tamen iam summorum imperatorum clarissimas victorias aetas nostra vidit, quarum nulla neque tam diuturnam laetitiam attulit nec tantam.

Commit this to memory, gentlemen. I hope that you and your children will see many good things in the commonwealth; in each one of them you will always reckon thus: that, had P. Clodius been alive, you would have seen none of them. We have been led into the greatest hope, and, as I trust, the truest: that this very year, with this most eminent man as consul, men’s licence checked, their cravings broken, the laws and the courts re-established, will be a year of safety for the state. Is there anyone, then, so deranged as to think that this could have come to pass while P. Clodius lived? And what of the things you hold as private and your own — what right of perpetual possession could they have had, with a frenzied man as master? I am not afraid, gentlemen, that I may seem, inflamed by hatred born of my own enmities, to be venting these things upon him with more relish than truth. For although it ought to have been particular to me, yet he was so far the common enemy of all that my own hatred barely held its own amid the common hatred. It cannot be said enough, nor even conceived, how much of crime, how much of ruin was in that man.

mandate hoc memoriae, iudices. spero multa vos liberosque vestros in re publica bona esse visuros: in eis singulis ita semper existimabitis, vivo P. Clodio nihil eorum vos visuros fuisse. in spem maximam et, quem ad modum confido, verissimam sumus adducti, hunc ipsum annum, hoc summo viro consule, compressa hominum licentia, cupiditatibus confractis, legibus et iudiciis constitutis, salutarem civitati fore. num quis igitur est tam demens qui hoc P. Clodio vivo contingere potuisse arbitretur? quid? ea quae tenetis privata atque vestra dominante homine furioso quod ius perpetuae possessionis habere potuissent? non timeo, iudices, ne odio mearum inimicitiarum inflammatus libentius haec in illum evomere videar quam verius. etenim si praecipuum esse debebat, tamen ita communis erat omnium ille hostis ut in communi odio paene aequaliter versaretur odium meum. non potest dici satis, ne cogitari quidem, quantum in illo sceleris, quantum exiti fuerit.

Nay, attend in this way, gentlemen. Picture to your minds — for our thoughts are free, and behold what they will in such a way that we discern it as we discern the things we see — picture, then, in thought the image of this plight of mine: if I could bring it about that you acquit Milo, but only on this condition, that P. Clodius come back to life. Why have you taken fright in your faces? How would he, living, affect you, when, dead, he has struck you with an empty thought? What of this? If Cn. Pompey himself — a man of such virtue and such fortune that he has always been able to do what no one but he could do — if he, I say, had been able either to bring a bill of inquiry into the death of P. Clodius or to raise the man himself from the dead, which do you think he would rather have done? Even if for friendship’s sake he should wish to call him back from the dead, for the commonwealth’s sake he would not have done it. You sit, then, as avengers of the death of a man whose life, if you thought it could be restored through you, you would not wish restored; and a bill of inquiry has been carried touching the murder of one who, could he come to life again under that same law, would never have had that law carried at all. If, then, there were a slayer of this man, would he, in confessing it, fear punishment from those whom he had set free?

quin sic attendite, iudices. fingite animis—liberae sunt enim nostrae cogitationes et quae volunt sic intuentur ut ea cernimus quae videmus —fingite igitur cogitatione imaginem huius condicionis meae, si possimus efficere Milonem ut absolvatis, sed ita si P. Clodius revixerit—quid voltu extimuistis? quonam modo ille vos vivus adficeret quos mortuus inani cogitatione percussit? quid? si ipse Cn. Pompeius, qui ea virtute ac fortuna est ut ea potuerit semper quae nemo praeter illum, si is, inquam, potuisset aut quaestionem de morte P. Clodi ferre aut ipsum ab inferis excitare, utrum putatis potius facturum fuisse? etiam si propter amicitiam vellet illum ab inferis evocare, propter rem publicam non fecisset. eius igitur mortis sedetis ultores cuius vitam si putetis per vos restitui posse nolitis, et de eius nece lata quaestio est qui si lege eadem reviviscere posset, ista lex lata numquam esset. huius ergo interfector si esset, in confitendo ab eisne poenam timeret quos liberavisset?

The Greeks award the honours of gods to those men who have slain tyrants — the things I have seen at Athens, in the other cities of Greece! What rites of worship instituted for such men, what hymns, what songs! They are all but consecrated to immortality, both in religion and in remembrance — and you, will you not only confer no honours upon the preserver of so great a people, the avenger of so great a crime, but even suffer him to be dragged off to execution? He would confess — he would confess, I say, if he had done it, and would do so with a high heart and gladly: that he had acted for the freedom of all, a thing not only to be confessed, but truly to be proclaimed.

Graeci homines deorum honores tribuunt eis viris qui tyrannos necaverunt—quae ego vidi Athenis, quae in aliis urbibus Graeciae! quas res divinas talibus institutas viris, quos cantus, quae carmina! prope ad immortalitatis et religionem et memoriam consecrantur—vos tanti conservatorem populi, tanti sceleris ultorem non modo honoribus nullis adficietis sed etiam ad supplicium rapi patiemini? confiteretur, confiteretur, inquam, si fecisset, et magno animo et libenter, se fecisse libertatis omnium causa quod esset non confitendum modo sed etiam vere praedicandum.

For if a man does not deny that for which he asks nothing but pardon, would he hesitate to avow that for which he ought to be claiming the rewards of praise? Unless, indeed, he supposes you find it more welcome that he was the defender of his own life than of yours — especially when, by such a confession, were you willing to be grateful, he would attain the most ample honours. But if the deed found no favour with you — though how could his own safety fail to find favour with anyone? — yet still, if the courage of a most brave man fell out unwelcome to his fellow citizens, he would withdraw from an ungrateful state with a high and steadfast heart. For what could be more ungrateful than that all the rest should rejoice, and he alone should grieve, the very man on whose account the rest were rejoicing?

etenim si id non negat ex quo nihil petit nisi ut ignoscatur, dubitaret id fateri ex quo etiam praemia laudis essent petenda? nisi vero gratius putat esse vobis sui se capitis quam vestri defensorem fuisse; cum praesertim in tali confessione, si grati esse velletis, honores adsequeretur amplissimos. sin factum vobis non probaretur—quamquam qui poterat salus sua cuiquam non probari?—sed tamen si minus fortissimi viri virtus civibus grata cecidisset, magno animo constantique cederet ex ingrata civitate. nam quid esset ingratius quam laetari ceteros, lugere eum solum propter quem ceteri laetarentur?

And yet this has always been the spirit in all of us, in crushing the betrayers of our country: that, since the glory would be ours, we should reckon the danger and the hatred ours as well. For what praise should be rendered to me myself — when in my consulship I had dared so much for you and for your children — if I had thought I could dare what I was attempting without the greatest struggles of my own? What woman would not dare to kill a wicked and ruinous citizen, if she did not fear the danger? But the man who, with hatred, death, and punishment set before him, defends the commonwealth no more slackly for that — he is the man who must truly be reckoned a man. It is the mark of a grateful people to reward citizens who have deserved well of the commonwealth; it is the mark of a brave man not to be moved even by punishments to repent of having acted bravely.

quamquam hoc animo semper fuimus omnes in patriae proditoribus opprimendis ut, quoniam futura esset nostra gloria, periculum quoque et invidiam nostram putaremus. nam quae mihi tribuenda ipsi laus esset, cum tantum in consulatu meo pro vobis ac liberis vestris ausus essem, si id quod conabar sine maximis dimicationibus meis me esse ausurum arbitrarer? quae mulier interficere sceleratum ac perniciosum civem non auderet, si periculum non timeret? proposita invidia, morte, poena qui nihilo segnius rem publicam defendit, is vir vere putandus est. populi grati est praemiis adficere bene meritos de re publica civis, viri fortis ne suppliciis quidem moveri ut fortiter fecisse paeniteat.

Therefore let T. Annius use the same confession that Ahala used, that Nasica, that Opimius, that Marius, that we ourselves used; and, if the commonwealth were grateful, let him rejoice; if ungrateful, let him still, in a heavy lot, lean upon his own conscience. But the gratitude for this service, gentlemen, the Fortune of the Roman people and your own good fortune and the immortal gods reckon to be owed to themselves. Nor indeed can anyone judge otherwise, unless he holds that there is no power and no divine will — a man whom neither the greatness of our empire moves, nor that sun, nor the motion of the sky and the constellations, nor the alternations and ordered courses of things, nor, what is greatest of all, the wisdom of our forefathers, who themselves cultivated the sacred rites, the ceremonies, the auspices with the utmost reverence, and handed them down to us, their descendants.

quam ob rem uteretur eadem confessione T. Annius qua Ahala, qua Nasica, qua Opimius, qua Marius, qua nosmet ipsi, et, si grata res publica esset, laetaretur; si ingrata, tamen in gravi fortuna conscientia sua niteretur. sed huius benefici gratiam, iudices, Fortuna populi Romani et vestra felicitas et di immortales sibi deberi putant. nec vero quisquam aliter arbitrari potest, nisi qui nullam vim esse ducit numenque divinum, quem neque imperi nostri magnitudo nec sol ille nec caeli signorumque motus nec vicissitudines rerum atque ordines movent neque, id quod maximum est, maiorum nostrorum sapientia, qui sacra, qui caerimonias, qui auspicia et ipsi sanctissime coluerunt et nobis suis posteris prodiderunt.

There is, there surely is that power; nor is it the case that, while in these bodies and in this frailty of ours there is something that has vigour and feeling, there is none in so vast and so glorious a movement of nature. Unless perhaps they think there is none because it does not show itself and is not seen — just as if we could see our own mind, by which we are wise, by which we foresee, by which we do and say these very things, and plainly perceive of what kind it is, or where. That power itself, then, which has often brought to this city blessings and resources past belief, snuffed out and destroyed that pestilence: first casting into his mind that he should dare to provoke with violence and challenge with the sword a most brave man, and should be conquered by the man whom, had he conquered, he would have held impunity and licence everlasting.

est, est illa vis profecto, neque in his corporibus atque in hac imbecillitate nostra inest quiddam quod vigeat et sentiat, non inest in hoc tanto naturae tamque praeclaro motu. Nisi forte idcirco non putant quia non apparet nec cernitur, proinde quasi nostram ipsam mentem qua sapimus, qua providemus, qua haec ipsa agimus ac dicimus, videre ac plane qualis aut ubi sit sentire possimus. ea vis igitur ipsa quae saepe incredibilis huic urbi felicitates atque opes attulit illam perniciem exstinxit ac sustulit, cui primum mentem iniecit ut vi inritare ferroque lacessere fortissimum virum auderet vincereturque ab eo quem si vicisset habiturus esset impunitatem et licentiam sempiternam.

It was not by human counsel, gentlemen, nor even by any ordinary one, but by the care of the immortal gods, that that deed was brought to pass. By Hercules, the very regions which saw that monster fall seem to have stirred themselves and to have kept their own right over him. For you now — you hills and groves of Alba — you, I say, I implore and call to witness; and you, ruined altars of the Albans, the partners and equals of the Roman people’s sacred rites, which that man, headlong in his madness, had buried beneath the insane masses of his foundations, the most holy groves cut down and laid low: your sacred powers were then in their vigour, your might prevailed, the might which he had defiled with every crime. And you, holy Jupiter of Latium, from your high mountain — you whose lakes and groves and bounds he had so often stained with every unspeakable defilement and crime — you at last opened your eyes to punish him: to you, to you and in your sight, were those penalties paid, late, but just nonetheless, and owed.

non est humano consilio, ne mediocri quidem, iudices, deorum immortalium cura res illa perfecta. regiones me hercule ipsae quae illam beluam cadere viderunt, commosse se videntur et ius in illo suum retinuisse. vos enim iam, Albani tumuli atque luci, vos, inquam, imploro atque testor, vosque, Albanorum obrutae arae, sacrorum populi Romani sociae et aequales, quas ille praeceps amentia caesis prostratisque sanctissimis lucis substructionum insanis molibus oppresserat; vestrae tum religiones viguerunt, vestra vis valuit, quam ille omni scelere polluerat; tuque ex tuo edito monte Latiari, sancte Iuppiter, cuius ille lacus, nemora finisque saepe omni nefario stupro et scelere macularat, aliquando ad eum puniendum oculos aperuisti: vobis illae, vobis vestro in conspectu serae, sed iustae tamen et debitae poenae solutae sunt.

Unless perhaps we shall say that this too came about by chance: that before the very shrine of the Good Goddess, which is on the estate of T. Sertius Gallus, a young man among the foremost in honour and distinction — before the Good Goddess herself, I say — when he had joined battle, he received that first wound by which he was to meet a most loathsome death; so that he should seem not acquitted by that abominable trial, but reserved for this signal punishment. Nor indeed did the same anger of the gods fail to cast this madness upon his followers: that without ancestral images, without dirge and games, without funeral rites, without lamentations, without eulogies, without a funeral, smeared with gore and mud, stripped of the solemnity of that last day which even enemies are wont to grant, he was burned, flung aside. It was not lawful, I believe, that the likenesses of the most illustrious men should bring any honour to that most loathsome parricide; nor that his death should be mangled in any place rather than in the one where his life had been condemned.

nisi forte hoc etiam casu factum esse dicemus ut ante ipsum sacrarium bonae deae, quod est in fundo T. Serti Galli, in primis honesti et ornati adulescentis, ante ipsam, inquam, bonam deam, cum proelium commisisset, primum illud volnus acciperet quo taeterrimam mortem obiret, ut non absolutus iudicio illo nefario videretur, sed ad hanc insignem poenam reservatus. nec vero non eadem ira deorum hanc eius satellitibus iniecit amentiam ut sine imaginibus, sine cantu atque ludis, sine exsequiis, sine lamentis, sine laudationibus, sine funere, oblitus cruore et luto, spoliatus illius supremi diei celebritate cui cedere inimici etiam solent ambureretur abiectus. non fuisse credo fas clarissimorum virorum formas illi taeterrimo parricidae aliquid decoris adferre, neque ullo in loco potius mortem eius lacerari quam in quo esset vita damnata.

Harsh, so help me god, and cruel did the Fortune of the Roman people seem to me by now, which had suffered him for so many years to trample upon this commonwealth. He had defiled the most holy rites with debauchery, he had shattered the gravest decrees of the Senate, he had openly bought himself off from the jurors with money, he had harried the Senate in his tribunate, he had undone what had been done by the consensus of all the orders for the safety of the commonwealth, he had driven me from my country, he had plundered my goods, he had burned my house, he had harried my children and my wife, he had declared an unspeakable war upon Cn. Pompey, he had wrought the slaughter of magistrates and of private men, he had burned my brother’s house, he had laid Etruria waste, he had cast many men out of their homes and their fortunes; he pressed on, he bore down; the state, Italy, the provinces, the kingdoms could not contain his madness; already laws were being cut into bronze in his house that would make us over to our own slaves; there was nothing belonging to anyone — nothing, at least, on which he had set his heart — that he did not reckon would be his this year.

dura, me dius fidius, mihi iam fortuna populi Romani et crudelis videbatur, quae tot annos illum in hanc rem publicam insultare pateretur. polluerat stupro sanctissimas religiones, senatus gravissima decreta perfregerat, pecunia se a iudicibus palam redemerat, vexarat in tribunatu senatum, omnium ordinum consensu pro salute rei publicae gesta resciderat, me patria expulerat, bona diripuerat, domum incenderat, liberos, coniugem meam vexarat, Cn. Pompeio nefarium bellum indixerat, magistratuum privatorumque caedis effecerat, domum mei fratris incenderat, vastarat Etruriam, multos sedibus ac fortunis eiecerat; instabat, urgebat; capere eius amentiam civitas, Italia, provinciae, regna non poterant; incidebantur iam domi leges quae nos servis nostris addicerent; nihil erat cuiusquam, quod quidem ille adamasset, quod non hoc anno suum fore putaret.

No one stood in the way of his designs but Milo. The one man who could stand in his way he reckoned bound to himself by a new return to favour; he kept saying that Caesar’s power was his own; he had despised the spirit of good men in my own downfall: Milo alone bore down upon him. At this point the immortal gods, as I said above, put it into the mind of that desperate madman to lay an ambush for Milo. There was no other way for that pest to perish; the commonwealth would never have avenged itself upon him by its own right. The Senate, I suppose, would have curbed him as praetor. Not even when it used to do so had it made any headway against him as a private man.

obstabat eius cogitationibus nemo praeter Milonem. illum ipsum qui poterat obstare novo reditu in gratiam sibi devinctum arbitrabatur; Caesaris potentiam suam esse dicebat; bonorum animos in meo casu contempserat: Milo unus urgebat. hic di immortales, ut supra dixi, mentem illi perdito ac furioso dederunt ut huic faceret insidias. aliter perire pestis illa non potuit; numquam illum res publica suo iure esset ulta. senatus, credo, praetorem eum circumscripsisset. ne cum solebat quidem id facere, in privato eodem hoc aliquid profecerat.

Or would the consuls have been brave in keeping a praetor in check? First, once Milo was killed, he would have had his own consuls; next, what consul would be brave in dealing with that praetor, through whom he remembered that the consular authority of a tribune had been most cruelly harried? He would have crushed everything, possessed everything, held everything; by a new law — one found among his papers along with the rest of the Clodian laws — he would have made our slaves into his own freedmen; in short, had not the immortal gods driven him into the mind to attempt, an effeminate man, the killing of a most brave one, you would have had no commonwealth today.

an consules in praetore coercendo fortes fuissent? primum Milone occiso habuisset suos consules; deinde quis in eo praetore consul fortis esset per quem tribunum virtutem consularem crudelissime vexatam esse meminisset? oppressisset omnia, possideret, teneret; lege nova, quae est inventa apud eum cum reliquis legibus Clodianis, servos nostros libertos suos effecisset; postremo, nisi eum di immortales in eam mentem impulissent ut homo effeminatus fortissimum virum conaretur occidere, hodie rem publicam nullam haberetis.

Would that man as praetor, that man indeed as consul — if only these temples and these very walls could have stood so long while he lived, and could have awaited his consulship — would he, in fine, while alive, have done no harm, when, once dead, one of his own followers set fire to the Senate-house on his account? And what have we seen more wretched, more bitter, more grievous than this? That a temple of holiness, of greatness, of intelligence, of public counsel, the head of the city, the altar of our allies, the haven of all nations, the seat granted by the whole people to a single order, should be set ablaze, demolished, defiled — and that this should be done not by an ignorant mob, wretched as that itself would be, but by a single man? When he who burned the corpse dared so much for the dead man, what would the standard-bearer not have dared for the living? Into the Senate-house above all places he flung him, so that dead he should burn down what alive he had overthrown.

an ille praetor, ille vero consul, si modo haec templa atque ipsa moenia stare eo vivo tam diu et consulatum eius exspectare potuissent, ille denique vivus mali nihil fecisset cui mortuo unus ex suis satellitibus curiam incenderit? quo quid miserius, quid acerbius, quid luctuosius vidimus? templum sanctitatis, amplitudinis, mentis, consili publici, caput urbis, aram sociorum, portum omnium gentium, sedem ab universo populo concessam uni ordini, inflammari, exscindi, funestari, neque id fieri a multitudine imperita, quamquam esset miserum id ipsum, sed ab uno? qui cum tantum ausus sit ustor pro mortuo, quid signifer pro vivo non esset ausurus? in curiam potissimum abiecit, ut eam mortuus incenderet quam vivus everterat.

And there are those who complain of the Appian Way, yet say nothing of the Senate-house; who suppose that the Forum could have been defended against him while he breathed, when his corpse the Senate-house could not withstand. Raise him up, raise him up, if you can, from the dead: will you break the onset of the living, you who scarcely endure the fury of his unburied body? Or did you withstand those men who ran together with firebrands to the Senate-house, with axes to the temple of Castor, who flitted through the whole Forum with swords? You saw the Roman people cut down, the assembly broken up by swords, while M. Caelius, tribune of the plebs, was being heard in silence — a man both in public life most brave and in the cause he had taken up most firm, devoted to the will of good men and the authority of the Senate, and, in this matter of Milo’s — call it his unpopularity or his fortune — of a loyalty singular, godlike, past all belief.

et sunt qui de via Appia querantur, taceant de curia, et qui ab eo spirante forum putent potuisse defendi, cuius non restiterit cadaveri curia? excitate, excitate ipsum, si potestis, a mortuis: frangetis impetum vivi cuius vix sustinetis furias insepulti? Nisi vero sustinuistis eos qui cum facibus ad curiam concurrerunt, cum fascibus ad Castoris, cum gladiis toto foro volitaverunt. caedi vidistis populum Romanum, contionem gladiis disturbari, cum audiretur silentio M. Caelius, tribunus plebis, vir et in re publica fortissimus, in suscepta causa firmissimus, et bonorum voluntati, auctoritati senatus deditus, et in hac Milonis sive invidia sive fortuna, singulari, divina, incredibili fide.

But now I have said enough about the case, and outside the case perhaps even too much. What remains but that I beg and beseech you, gentlemen, to grant to a most brave man the pity which he himself does not implore, but which I, against his will, both implore and demand? Do not, if amid the weeping of us all you have caught sight of no tear from Milo, if you see his face always the same, his voice, his speech steady and unaltered — do not for that reason spare him the less: I rather think he should perhaps be helped all the more. For if, in gladiatorial combats and in the lot and condition of men of the lowest sort, we are wont even to hate the timid and the suppliant and those who beg to be allowed to live, while we long that the brave and spirited, who fiercely offer themselves to death, be spared — and if we pity more those who do not seek our pity than those who clamour for it — how much more ought we to do this in the case of most brave citizens!

sed iam satis multa de causa, extra causam etiam nimis fortasse multa. quid restat nisi ut orem obtesterque vos, iudices, ut eam misericordiam tribuatis fortissimo viro quam ipse non implorat, ego etiam repugnante hoc et imploro et exposco? nolite, si in nostro omnium fletu nullam lacrimam aspexistis Milonis, si voltum semper eundem, si vocem, si orationem stabilem ac non mutatam videtis, hoc minus ei parcere: haud scio an multo etiam sit adiuvandus magis. etenim si in gladiatoriis pugnis et in infimi generis hominum condicione atque fortuna timidos et supplices et ut vivere liceat obsecrantis etiam odisse solemus, fortis et animosos et se acriter ipsos morti offerentis servari cupimus, eorumque nos magis miseret qui nostram misericordiam non requirunt quam qui illam efflagitant, quanto hoc magis in fortissimis civibus facere debemus!

For my part, gentlemen, I am unmanned and undone by these words of Milo’s, which I hear without ceasing and am present to hear every day. “Farewell,” he says, “farewell, my fellow citizens; may they be safe, may they flourish, may they prosper; may this glorious city stand, my country dearest to me, however it shall have deserved of me; may my fellow citizens, since I may not enjoy it with them, enjoy the commonwealth in peace without me, yet on my account. I will yield and go. If I may not enjoy a good commonwealth, at least I shall be free of a bad one; and the first well-ordered and free state I reach, in that I will find my rest.”

me quidem, iudices, exanimant et interimunt hae voces Milonis quas audio adsidue et quibus intersum cotidie. valeant, inquit valeant cives mei; sint incolumes, sint florentes, sint beati; stet haec urbs praeclara mihique patria carissima, quoquo modo erit merita de me; tranquilla re publica mei cives, quoniam mihi cum illis non licet, sine me ipsi, sed propter me tamen perfruantur. ego cedam atque abibo. si mihi bona re publica frui non licuerit, at carebo mala, et quam primum tetigero bene moratam et liberam civitatem, in ea conquiescam.

“O labours of mine,” he says, “undertaken in vain! O deceiving hopes! O empty thoughts of mine! When, as tribune of the plebs, with the commonwealth crushed, I gave myself to the Senate, which I had received as good as extinguished, to the Roman knights whose strength was feeble, to the good men who had thrown away all authority before the arms of Clodius — could I ever have thought that the protection of good men would fail me? When I had given you back — for he speaks with me very often — to your country, could I have thought there would be no place for me in my own? Where now is the Senate which we followed? Where the Roman knights — those, he says, those of yours? Where the zeal of the towns? Where the voices of Italy? Where, in fine, your own voice and defence, M. Tullius, which has been a help to so many? To me alone, who have so often offered myself to death for you, can it bring no aid?”

O frustra inquit mei suscepti labores, o spes fallaces, o cogitationes inanes meae! ego cum tribunus plebis re publica oppressa me senatui dedissem quem exstinctum acceperam, equitibus Romanis quorum vires erant debiles, bonis viris qui omnem auctoritatem Clodianis armis abiecerant, mihi umquam bonorum praesidium defuturum putarem? ego cum te —mecum enim saepissime loquitur— patriae reddidissem, mihi putarem in patria non futurum locum? Vbi nunc senatus est quem secuti sumus, ubi equites Romani illi, illi inquit tui? ubi studia municipiorum, ubi Italiae voces, ubi denique tua, M. Tulli, quae plurimis fuit auxilio, vox atque defensio? mihine ea soli qui pro te totiens morti me obtuli nihil potest opitulari?

And he says these things, gentlemen, not, as I do now, weeping, but with the very face you see. For he denies — he denies that he did what he did for ungrateful citizens; for timid ones, who eye every danger about them, he does not deny it. The common people and the lowest crowd, which under Clodius’s leadership was threatening your fortunes — that he made safer, that your own lives might be the more secure; so that he not only swayed it by his courage but soothed it with his three patrimonies; nor does he fear that, having appeased the people with shows, he has failed to win you over by his singular services to the commonwealth. The Senate’s goodwill toward him has often been seen clearly in these very times; but your own kindnesses, and those of the men of your order — your meetings, your zeal, your talk — whatever course Fortune shall take, he says he will carry away with him.

nec vero haec, iudices, ut ego nunc, flens, sed hoc eodem loquitur voltu quo videtis. negat enim se, negat ingratis civibus fecisse quae fecerit, timidis et omnia pericula circumspicientibus non negat. plebem et infimam multitudinem, quae P. Clodio duce fortunis vestris imminebat, eam quo tutior esset vestra vita suam se fecisse commemorat, ut non modo virtute flecteret sed etiam tribus suis patrimoniis deleniret, nec timet ne, cum plebem muneribus placarit, vos non conciliarit meritis in rem publicam singularibus. senatus erga se benevolentiam temporibus his ipsis saepe esse perspectam, vestras vero et vestrorum ordinum occursationes, studia, sermones, quemcumque cursum fortuna ceperit, secum se ablaturum esse dicit.

He remembers too that the herald’s voice alone was wanting to him — which he wished for least of all — but that by all the votes of the people, the one thing he had desired, he was declared consul; and now at last, if these arms are to be turned against him, it is the suspicion of a deed, not the charge of one, that stands against him. He adds this, which is surely true: that brave and wise men are wont to pursue not so much the rewards of right deeds as the right deeds themselves; that he has done nothing in his life but what was most glorious, since there is nothing more excellent for a man than to free his country from peril.

meminit etiam vocem sibi praeconis modo defuisse, quam minime desiderarit, populi vero cunctis suffragiis, quod unum cupierit, se consulem declaratum; nunc denique, si haec arma contra se sint futura, sibi facinoris suspicionem, non facti crimen obstare. addit haec, quae certe vera sunt, fortis et sapientis viros non tam praemia sequi solere recte factorum quam ipsa recte facta; se nihil in vita nisi praeclarissime fecisse, si quidem nihil sit praestabilius viro quam periculis patriam liberare.

Happy, he says, are those for whom this deed has been an honour at the hands of their fellow citizens; yet not even those are wretched who have surpassed their fellow citizens in a benefit conferred. But still, of all the rewards of virtue — if account were to be taken of rewards — the most ample reward is glory; this alone it is that consoles the brevity of life with the remembrance of posterity, that brings it about that, though absent, we are present, and, though dead, we live; this, in fine, it is by whose steps men seem even to ascend into heaven.

beatos esse quibus ea res honori fuerit a suis civibus, nec tamen eos miseros qui beneficio civis suos vicerint. sed tamen ex omnibus praemiis virtutis, si esset habenda ratio praemiorum, amplissimum esse praemium gloriam; esse hanc unam quae brevitatem vitae posteritatis memoria consolaretur, quae efficeret ut absentes adessemus, mortui viveremus; hanc denique esse cuius gradibus etiam in caelum homines viderentur ascendere.

“Of me,” he says, “the Roman people will always speak, always all the nations; no length of time will ever fall silent. Nay, at this very moment, when all the torches of hatred against me are being thrust beneath me by my enemies, still in every gathering of men we are honoured with the giving of thanks and the offering of congratulations and in all men’s talk. I pass over the festal days of Etruria, both held and instituted. This is the hundredth day, I think, and one more, since the death of P. Clodius; and to wherever the bounds of the Roman people’s empire reach, not only the report of that deed by now, but the rejoicing in it, has travelled abroad. And so where this body of mine may be,” he says, “I do not trouble myself, since in all lands the glory of my name already moves and will forever dwell here.”

de me inquit semper populus Romanus, semper omnes gentes loquentur, nulla umquam obmutescet vetustas. quin hoc tempore ipso, cum omnes a meis inimicis faces invidiae meae subiciantur, tamen omni in hominum coetu gratiis agendis et gratulationibus habendis et omni sermone celebramur. omitto Etruriae festos et actos et institutos dies. centesima lux est haec ab interitu P. Clodi et, opinor, altera. qua fines imperi populi Romani sunt, ea non solum fama iam de illo sed etiam laetitia peragravit. quam ob rem ubi corpus hoc sit non inquit laboro, quoniam omnibus in terris et iam versatur et semper hic habitabit nominis mei gloria.

These things you have often said to me with these men absent; but these things I say to you, Milo, with these same men listening: you indeed, since you are of such a spirit, I cannot praise enough; but the more godlike that virtue of yours, the greater the grief with which I am torn from you. Nor indeed, if you are wrenched from me, is even that one complaint left me for consolation — that I might be angry with those from whom I had received so great a wound. For it is not my enemies who will wrench you from me, but my dearest friends; not men who have ever deserved ill of me, but men who have always deserved supremely well. You will never, gentlemen, brand me with a grief so great — and yet what grief could be so great? — no, not even this very one, as to make me forget how highly you have always valued me. But if that forgetting has seized you, or if you have taken some offence in me, why is it not rather paid for by my head than by Milo’s? For I shall have lived gloriously, if some accident befalls me before I see this great evil come to pass.

haec tu mecum saepe his absentibus, sed isdem audientibus haec ego tecum, Milo: te quidem, cum isto animo sis, satis laudare non possum, sed, quo est ista magis divina virtus, eo maiore a te dolore divellor. nec vero, si mihi eriperis, reliqua est illa saltem ad consolandum querela ut eis irasci possim a quibus tantum volnus accepero. non enim inimici mei te mihi eripient, sed amicissimi, non male aliquando de me meriti, sed semper optime. nullum mihi umquam, iudices, tantum dolorem inuretis—tametsi quis potest esse tantus?—sed ne hunc quidem ipsum ut obliviscar quanti me semper feceritis. quae si vos cepit oblivio aut si in me aliquid offendistis, cur non id in meo capite potius luitur quam Milonis? praeclare enim vixero, si quid mihi acciderit prius quam hoc tantum mali videro.

As it is, one consolation upholds me: that toward you, T. Annius, no office of love, of zeal, of devotion has been wanting on my part. For you I sought the enmities of the powerful; for you I have often flung my own body and life against the weapons of your enemies; for you I have cast myself down as a suppliant before very many; my goods, my fortunes and those of my children I have brought into partnership with your trials; this very day, in fine, if any force is in readiness, if any struggle for life is at hand, I claim it for my own. What now remains? What have I left to do for your services to me but to count whatever fortune shall be yours as mine? I do not refuse it, I do not shrink from it; and I beseech you, gentlemen, either to crown the kindnesses you have heaped upon me by his preservation, or to see that they are doomed to fall with this same man’s destruction.

nunc me una consolatio sustentat, quod tibi, T. Anni, nullum a me amoris, nullum studi, nullum pietatis officium defuit. ego inimicitias potentium pro te appetivi; ego meum saepe corpus et vitam obieci armis inimicorum tuorum; ego me plurimis pro te supplicem abieci; bona, fortunas meas ac liberorum meorum in communionem tuorum temporum contuli; hoc denique ipso die, si qua vis est parata, si qua dimicatio capitis futura, deposco. quid iam restat? quid habeo quod faciam pro tuis in me meritis nisi ut eam fortunam quaecumque erit tua ducam meam? non abnuo, non recuso, vosque obsecro, iudices, ut vestra beneficia quae in me contulistis aut in huius salute augeatis aut in eiusdem exitio occasura esse videatis.

By these tears Milo is not moved — he is of a certain incredible strength of mind — he thinks exile to be there, where there is no place for virtue, and death to be the end of nature, not a punishment. Let him be of the spirit he was born with: but what of you, gentlemen? With what spirit, in the end, will you be? Will you keep the memory of Milo, and cast out the man himself? And will there be any place in all the earth worthier to receive this virtue than the one that brought it forth? You — you I appeal to, bravest of men, who have shed much blood for the commonwealth; you, I say, in the peril of an unconquered citizen, I appeal to, centurions, and you, soldiers: while you not only look on but stand armed and guard this court, shall this virtue, so great, be driven from this city, banished, cast out?

his lacrimis non commovetur Milo—est quodam incredibili robore animi—exsilium ibi esse putat ubi virtuti non sit locus; mortem naturae finem esse, non poenam. sit hic ea mente qua natus est: quid? vos, iudices, quo tandem eritis animo? memoriam Milonis retinebitis, ipsum eicietis? et erit dignior locus ullus in terris qui hanc virtutem excipiat quam hic qui procreavit? vos, vos appello, fortissimi viri, qui multum pro re publica sanguinem effudistis; vos, inquam, in civis invicti periculo appello, centuriones, vosque, milites: vobis non modo inspectantibus sed etiam armatis et huic iudicio praesidentibus haec tanta virtus ex hac urbe expelletur, exterminabitur, proicietur?

O wretched that I am! O unhappy that I am! You, Milo, could call me back to my country through these men; shall I not be able, through these same men, to keep you in your country? What shall I answer my children, who think you their second parent? What shall I answer you, my brother Quintus, who are now away, the partner with me of those times? That I could not protect Milo’s safety through the same men through whom he had preserved ours? And in what cause could I not? One that is welcome to all the nations. From what men could I not? From those who took most comfort in the death of P. Clodius. With whom pleading? Me.

O me miserum, o me infelicem! revocare tu me in patriam, Milo, potuisti per hos, ego te in patria per eosdem retinere non potero? quid respondebo liberis meis qui te parentem alterum putant? quid tibi, Quinte frater, qui nunc abes, consorti mecum temporum illorum? mene non potuisse Milonis salutem tueri per eosdem per quos nostram ille servasset? at in qua causa non potuisse? quae est grata omnibus gentibus. A quibus non potuisse? ab eis qui maxime P. Clodi morte acquierunt. quo deprecante? me.

What crime so great did I conceive, gentlemen, or what monstrous deed did I commit against myself, when I tracked out the proofs of our common ruin, laid them bare, brought them forth, stamped them out? All my griefs, and my family’s, well up from that one source. Why did you wish me to return? Was it that, with me looking on, the men by whom I was restored should be driven out? Do not, I beg you, suffer my return to be more bitter to me than that very departure was. For how can I think myself restored, if I am torn away from the men through whom I was restored? Would that the immortal gods had brought it about — by your leave, my country, let me say it, for I fear lest what I shall say dutifully for Milo I shall say criminally against you — would that P. Clodius were not only alive, but even praetor, consul, dictator, rather than that I should look upon this spectacle!

quodnam ego concepi tantum scelus aut quod in me tantum facinus admisi, iudices, cum illa indicia communis exiti indagavi, patefeci, protuli, exstinxi? omnes mihi meisque redundant ex fonte illo dolores. quid me reducem esse voluistis? an ut inspectante me expellerentur ei per quos essem restitutus? nolite, obsecro vos, acerbiorem mihi pati reditum esse quam fuerit ille ipse discessus. nam qui possum putare me restitutum, si distrahor ab his per quos restitutus sum? Vtinam di immortales fecissent—pace tua, patria, dixerim: metuo enim ne scelerate dicam in te quod pro Milone dicam pie— utinam P. Clodius non modo viveret sed etiam praetor, consul, dictator esset potius quam hoc spectaculum viderem!

O immortal gods! A brave man, gentlemen, and one to be preserved by you! “By no means, by no means,” he says; “rather let him pay the penalties he owed; let us undergo, if it must be so, penalties not owed.” Shall this man, born for his country, die anywhere but in his country, or, perhaps, for his country? Will you keep the memorials of his spirit, and suffer his body to have no tomb in Italy? Will anyone, by his own vote, drive from this city the man whom, once you have driven him out, all cities will call to themselves?

O di immortales! fortem et a vobis, iudices, conservandum virum! minime, minime; inquit immo vero poenas ille debitas luerit: nos subeamus, si ita necesse est, non debitas. hicine vir patriae natus usquam nisi in patria morietur, aut, si forte, pro patria? huius vos animi monumenta retinebitis, corporis in Italia nullum sepulcrum esse patiemini? hunc sua quisquam sententia ex hac urbe expellet quem omnes urbes expulsum a vobis ad se vocabunt?

O happy that land which shall receive this man! Ungrateful, if it cast him out! Wretched, if it lose him! But let there be an end; for I can no longer speak for tears, and this man forbids that he be defended with tears. I beg and beseech you, gentlemen, that in casting your votes you dare to vote what you truly judge. Your courage, your justice, your good faith — believe me — he will most of all approve, who in choosing the jurors picked out each best and wisest and bravest man.

O terram illam beatam quae hunc virum exceperit, hanc ingratam si eiecerit, miseram si amiserit! sed finis sit; neque enim prae lacrimis iam loqui possumus, et hic se lacrimis defendi vetat. vos oro obtestorque, iudices, ut in sententiis ferendis, quod sentietis, id audeatis. vestram virtutem, iustitiam, fidem, mihi credite, is maxime comprobabit qui in iudicibus legendis optimum et sapientissimum et fortissimum quemque delegit.

C icero by Claude

For Titus Annius Milo

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