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

And since the beginnings of all great things are derived from the gods, I wish you to answer me,—you, who are accustomed to call yourself a Pythagorean, and to put forth the name of a most learned man as a screen to bide your own savage and barbarian habits,—what depravity of intellect possessed you, what excessive frenzy seized on you, and made you, when you had begun your unheard-of and impious sacrifices, accustomed as you are to seek to evoke the spirits of the shades below, and to appease the Dî Manes with the entrails of murdered boys, despise the auspices under which this city was founded, by which the whole of this republic and empire is kept together, and, at the very beginning of your tribuneship, give notice to the senate that the responses of the augurs and the arrogance of that college should be no obstacle to your proceedings? [15] Next to that I ask you whether you kept your promise in that particular? Did the fact of your knowing that on that day the heavens had been observed, delay, or not delay your summoning the council, and proposing your intended law? And since this is the one thing which you say belongs to you in common with Caesar, I will separate you from him, not only for the sake of the republic, but also for the sake of Caesar, lest any stain from your extraordinary infamy should seem to attach itself to his dignity. First of all, I ask you whether you trust your case to the senate, as Caesar does? Next, what sort of authority that man has who defends himself by the conduct of another and not by his own? Next (for my real sentiments will at times burst forth, and I cannot help saying without circumlocution what I feel,) even if Caesar had been rather violent in any particular, if the importance of the contest and anxiety for glory, and his eminent courage, and his admirable nobility of character had carried him away at all, which would have been endurable in that great man, and would have deserved to be obliterated from our minds by the mighty exploits which he has subsequently performed, will you, you wretch, assume the same privilege to yourself, and is the voice of Vatinius, the thief and sacrilegious man, to be heard, demanding that the same indulgence is to be allowed to him that is allowed to Caesar? For this is what I ask of you.