15.
In the presence and sight of these same consuls, a law was passed that the
auspices were to have no validity; that no
one was to interrupt any proceeding by declaring that he was taking them;
that no one was to have the power of arresting a law by his veto; that it
should be lawful to pass a law on all days of festival; that the Aelian1
and Fufian laws should have no validity. And who is there who can fail to
see that by that one motion, the entire constitution was
destroyed?
[34]
In the presence and sight of
these same consuls, a levy of slaves was held before the tribunal of
Aurelius, under pretence of filling up the guilds, when men were enrolled
according to their streets, and divided into decuries, and stirred up to
violence, and battle, and slaughter, and plunder. It was while these same
men were consuls, that arms were openly carried into the temple of Castor,
and the steps of the temple were pulled up; armed men occupied the forum and
the assemblies of the people; slaughters and stonings of people took place;
there was no senate, no magistrates were left; one man by arms and piratical
violence seized on all the power of all the magistrates not by any power of
his own, but having bribed the two consuls to desert the republic by the
treaty respecting the provinces, he insulted every one, domineered over
every one, made promises to some held down many by terror and fear and
gained over more by hope and promises.
[35]
And when such was the state of all things,
O judges,—when the senate had no leaders or traitors, or I should
rather say open enemies, in the place of leaders,—when the
equestrian order was being put on its trial by the consuls,—when
the authority of all Italy was
trampled on,—when some men were banished by name others frightened
away by terror and danger,—when the temples were full of arms and
the forum of armed men; and when those facts were not concealed by the
silence of the consuls, but were openly approved of by them by their
speeches and their formal decision,—when we all of us saw the city
not yet perhaps razed and destroyed, but at all events already stormed and
in the power of the enemy,—nevertheless relying on the exceeding
zeal of the virtuous part of the citizens, we would have resisted, O judges,
even these enormous evils.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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