[11] The Senate (since no one called it together and it was not lawful for one consul to do so without the consent of the other) assembled at the house of Bibulus, but did nothing to counteract the force and preparation of Cæsar. They planned, however, that Bibulus should oppose Cæsar's laws, so that they should seem to be overcome by force rather than by their own negligence. Accordingly, Bibulus burst into the forum while Cæsar was still speaking. Strife and tumult arose, blows were given, and those who had daggers broke the fasces and insignia of Bibulus and wounded some of the tribunes who stood around him. Bibulus was in no wise terrified, but bared his neck to Cæsar's partisans and loudly called on them to strike. "If I cannot persuade Cæsar to do right," he said, "I will affix upon him the guilt and stigma of my death." His friends, however, led him, against his will, out of the crowd and into the neighboring temple of Jupiter Stator. Cato was indignant at these proceedings, and, being a young man, forced his way to the midst of the crowd and began to make a speech, but was lifted up and dragged out by Cæsar's partisans. Then he went around secretly by another street and again mounted the rostra; but as he despaired of making a speech, since nobody would listen to him, he abused Cæsar roundly until he was ejected by the Cæsarians, and Cæsar secured the enactment of his laws.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.