[12]
When I wished to join them familiarly in
conversation, I was shut out; their projects were concealed from me: and when I assured them
that, if the law appeared to me to be advantageous to the Roman people, I would assist them
in it and promote it, still they rejected this liberality of mine with scorn, and said that I
could not possibly be induced to approve of any liberal measures. I ceased to offer myself to
them, lest perchance my importunity should seem to them treacherous or impudent. In the
meantime they did not cease to have secret meetings among themselves, to invite some private
individuals to them, and to choose night and darkness for their clandestine deliberations.
And what great alarm this conduct of theirs caused us, you may easily divine by your own
conjectures founded on the anxiety which you yourselves experienced at that time.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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