The Orations, Volume 3. Cicero

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СКАЧАТЬ of our own accord, by our own senses and conjectures, should be forced to entertain it. For there is not usually any other termination to dissensions between eminent and powerful men, except either universal destruction, or the domination of the victorious party, or regal power. Lucius Sylla, a most noble and gallant consul, quarrelled with Caius Marius, a most illustrious citizen. Each of these men, when defeated, fell so completely that the conqueror became a king. Cinna quarrelled with his colleague Octavius. To each of these men prosperity gave kingly power, and adversity brought death. The same Sylla became victorious a second time. And that time, beyond all question, he exercised regal power, though he re-established the republic. There is at this moment a hatred not concealed but implanted deeply, and burnt as it were into their minds, subsisting between men of the very highest rank. The chief men of the state are at variance. Every occasion is eagerly caught at. That party which is not so powerful as the other is nevertheless waiting for some change of fortune and for some favourable opportunity. That party which without dispute is the more powerful, is still perhaps at time afraid of the designs and opinions of its enemies. Let this discord be banished from the state. In a moment all those dangers which are foreshown by these prodigies will be banished. In a moment that serpent which is at present lurking about here will emerge and be brought to light, and will be strangled, and crushed, and die.

      XXVI. For the soothsayers warn us to take care that the republic is not injured by secret designs. What designs are more secret than those of that man who dared to say in the public assembly, that a suspension of the courts of justice ought to be proclaimed; that the jurisdiction of the judges ought to be interrupted, and the treasury shut, and all trials put an end to? Unless perhaps you think that all this confusion and overthrow of the constitution could occur to him all on a sudden, while in the rostrum, and that he was not speaking after mature deliberation. The man is full of wine, lust, and sleep,—full of the most inconsiderate and insane rashness; but still it was in his nocturnal vigils, and in a numerous company, that that suspension of justice was planned and concocted. Remember, O conscript fathers, that your ears were being experimented on by that expression, and that a most mischievous road was being made to them by accustoming you to hear it.

      These words follow: “That more honour must not be given to worthless citizens and rejected candidates.” Let us see who are the rejected candidates; for I will show you afterwards who are the worthless citizens. But still all men must allow that this expression suits that man above all others who is beyond all question the most worthless of all mortals. Who, then, are the rejected candidates? Not, I imagine, they who some time or other have failed to attain some honour more by the fault of the city than by their own. For that is a thing which has frequently happened to many most excellent citizens and most honourable men. Those are the rejected candidates meant, whom, when they were proceeding to the most violent measures, when they were preparing exhibitions of gladiators contrary to the laws, when they were bribing in the most open manner, not only strangers, but even their own relations, their neighbours, the men of their own tribe, towns-people and countrymen, all rejected. We are warned not to confer any additional honours on these men. It ought to be a very acceptable admonition that they give us; but still the Roman people itself, of its own accord, without any warning on the part of the soothsayers, has provided against this evil. O you worthless men, beware; and there is a great multitude of you; but still this man is the leader and chief of the whole band. In truth, if any poet of splendid genius were to wish to bring on the stage one most worthless man, deformed with all sorts of imaginary vices collected from all quarters, he would not, I pledge myself, be able to discover one disgraceful quality which did not exist in this man, and he would pass over many which are deeply implanted and firmly rooted in him.

      XXVII. In the first place nature attaches us to our parents, and to the immortal gods, and to our country. For at one and the same time we are brought forth to the light, and we are strengthened so as to grow by the breath of heaven which we feel around us, and we are established in a certain abode as citizens and free men. That fellow has jumbled in confusion the name of his parents, and his family sacrifices, and the memory of his family, and his family itself, by the assumption of the name of Fonteius. He has with unpardonable wickedness thrown into confusion the fires of the gods, their thrones, and tables, their secret hearths in the inmost recesses of the house, and sacrifices which were previously secret, and not only unseen by men, but even unheard-of by them; and besides all this he has set fire to the temple of those goddesses by whose aid people come to bring assistance in the case of other fires.

      Why should I mention his country? when in the first place by violence and arms, and dread of personal danger, he drove away from the city and from all the protection afforded him by his country that citizen whom you had decided over and over again to have been the saviour of his country. In the second place, having overthrown the companion of the senate, as I have always said, but its leader as he used to call him, he by violence, bloodshed, and conflagration, threw into confusion the senate itself, the mainstay of the general safety and of the public good sense; he abolished two laws, the Ælian and Fufian laws, which were of especial advantage to the state; he extinguished the censorship; he took away the power of intercession; he abolished the auspices; he armed the consuls, the companions of his wickedness, with the treasury, and provinces, and an army; he sold the kings who were in existence, and he called men kings who were not so; he drove Cnæus Pompeius to his house with violence and arms; he overthrew the monuments of our generals; he threw down the houses of his enemies; he inscribed his own name on your monuments. The wicked deeds which have been done by him to the injury of his country are innumerable. Why need I tell what he has done to individual citizens, whom he has slain? Why need I count up the allies whom he has plundered? or the generals whom he has betrayed? or the armies with which he has tampered? Why need I mention what enormous wickednesses they are which he has been guilty of towards himself, and towards his own relations? Who ever showed less mercy to the camp of an enemy than he has shown to every part of his own person? What ship in a public river was ever so open to all men as his youth was? What spendthrifts ever lived in so unrestrained a manner with prostitutes as he did with his own sisters? In short, what enormous Charybdis could the poets ever describe or ever imagine, capable of swallowing down such whirlpools as the plunder of the Byzantines and Brogitari which that fellow has sucked down? or what Sylla with such conspicuous and hungry hounds as the Gellii, and Clodii, and Titii with which you see that fellow devouring the rostrum itself?

      Wherefore, and that is the last sentence in the answers of the soothsayers, “Beware that the constitution of the republic be not changed.” In truth it is only with difficulty, even if we prop it up on all sides, that the constitution, already undermined and resting on all our shoulders, will be able to be kept together.

      XXVIII. This state was once so firm and so vigorous that it could withstand the indifference of the senate, or even the assaults of the citizens. Now it cannot. There is no treasury. Those who have contracted for the revenues do not enjoy them; the authority of the chief men has fallen; the agreement between the different orders of the state is torn asunder; the courts of justice are destroyed; the votes are all arranged and divided so as to be under the power of a few; the courage of the virtuous citizens, formerly ready at a nod from our order, exists no longer. Henceforth in vain will you look for a citizen who will expose himself to unpopularity for the welfare of his country. We can then preserve even this state of things which now exists, such as it is, by no other means than by unanimity; for although we may become better off, that cannot even be hoped for as long as he is unpunished. And if we are to be worse off than we are, there is but one step slower, that of death or slavery. And the immortal gods themselves warn us against allowing ourselves to be thrust down into that abyss, since all human counsels have long since failed.

      And I, O conscript fathers, should not have undertaken this speech, so melancholy and so serious; not but that owing to the honours conferred on me by the Roman people, and to the numberless distinctions which you have heaped upon me, I am both bound and able to support this character and to play this part; but still, when every one else was silent I should willingly have remained silent too. All this speech which I have made has not proceeded from my authority, but from my regard for the general religion. My words have, perhaps, been too many, but the whole sentiment has proceeded СКАЧАТЬ