M. Tullius Cicero, Against Piso
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

Come, the senate hates you, which, indeed, you admit that it does deservedly since you have been the oppressor and destroyer, not only of its dignity and authority but altogether of its existence and its name. The Roman knights cannot bear the sight of you, since one of their order a most excellent and accomplished man Lucius Aelius was banished by you when consul. The Roman people wishes your destruction, to whom, for the purpose of bringing infamy upon them you have attributed those things which you did concerning me by the instrumentality of your band of robbers and slaves. All Italy execrates you whose resolutions and entreaties you have scorned in the most arrogant and haughty manner. [65] Make experiment of this excessive and universal hatred if you dare. The most carefully prepared and magnificent games within the memory of man are just at hand, games such as not only never have been exhibited, but such that we cannot form a conception how it will he possible for any like them ever to be exhibited for the future. Trust yourself to the people, venture on attending these games. Are you afraid of hisses? Where are all the precepts of your schools? Are you afraid that there will be no acclamations raised in your honour? Surely it does not become a philosopher to regard even such a thing as that. You are afraid that violent hands may be laid on you. For pain is an evil, as you assert. The opinion which men entertain of you, disgrace, infamy, baseness,—these are all empty words, mere trifles. But about this I have no question. He will never dare to come near the games. He will attend the public banquet not out of regard for his dignity, (unless, perchance, for the purpose of supping with the conscript fathers,¹ that is to say, with those men who love him,) but merely for the sake of gratifying his appetite. [66] The games he will leave to us idiots, as he calls us. For he is in the habit, in all his arguments, of preferring the pleasures of his stomach to all delight of his eyes and ears.

For though you have perhaps considered him previously only dishonest, cruel, and a bit of a thief, and though he now appears to you also voracious, and sordid, and obstinate, and haughty, and deceitful, and perfidious, and imprudent, and audacious, know, too, that there is also nothing which is more licentious, nothing more lustful, nothing more base, nothing more wicked than this man. But do not think that it is mere luxury to which he is devoted. [67] For there is a species of luxury, though it is all vicious and unbecoming, which is still not wholly unworthy of a well-born and a free man. But in this man there is nothing refined, nothing elegant nothing exquisite; I will do justice even to an enemy,—there is nothing which is even very extravagant, except his lusts. There is no expense for works of carving. There are immense goblets, and those (in order that he may not appear to despise his countrymen) made at Placentia. His table is piled up, not with shell-fish and other fish, but with heaps of half-spoilt meat. He is waited on by a lot of dirty slaves, many of them old men. His cook is the same; his butler and porter the same. He has no baker at home, no cellar. His bread and his wine came from some huckster and some low wine-vault. His attendants are Greeks, five on a couch, often more. He is used to sit by himself, and to drink as long as there was anything in the cask.² When he hears the cock crow, then, thinking that his grandfather has come to life again, he orders the table to be cleared.