[33]
What? Are not men accustomed of their own accord
to change their garments on the occasion of danger to their friends? Is
there no one who will change it ever for you, O Piso? will not even those
men do so whom you have appointed as your lieutenants, not only without any
resolution of the senate to authorize such a step, but even in defiance of a
vote of that body? shall, then, whoever pleases mourn for the misfortune of
a desperate man, of a traitor to the commonwealth, and shall not the senate
be allowed to mourn for the danger of a citizen, strong above all men in the
good-will of all virtuous men, who has deserved admirably well of his
country, which he has saved, especially when with his danger is combined
danger to the whole state?
Those same consuls, (if, indeed, it is proper to call those men consuls who,
every one thinks, deserve not only to be eradicated from men's memories, but
to have their names erased from the consular registers,) after the treaty
about the provinces had been ratified, being brought forward to the assembly
in the Flaminian Circus by that fury and pest of his country, amid universal
grief on the part of all of you, gave their verbal sanction and formal
decision in approval of all the things which that fellow had then uttered
against me and against the republic.
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