10.
What more shall I say? If, then, amid the darkness and impenetrable clouds
and storms which were then lowering above the republic, when you had driven
the senate from the helm and turned the people out of the ship, and while
you yourself, like a captain of pirates, were hastening on with all your
sails set, with your most infamous band of robbers; if at that time you had
been able to carry the resolutions which you proposed, and punished, and
brought forward, and sold, what place in the whole world would have been
free from the extraordinary magistrates and commanders invested with their
power by the great Clodius?
[25]
But at last the indignation of Cnaeus Pompeius, (I will say, even in his
hearing, what I have felt, and still do feel what ever may be the way in
which he takes it,)—the indignation I say, of Cnaeus Pompeius,
which had been too long concealed and slumbering, being at last aroused,
came on a sudden to the aid of the republic, and raised the city crushed
with misfortunes, dumb, weakened, and broken spirited through fear to some
hope of recovering its liberty and former dignity. And was this man not to
be appointed to superintend the providing the city with corn? You, forsooth,
by your law abandoned all the corn, whether belonging to private individuals
or to the state, all the provinces which supply corn, and all the
contractors, and all the keys of the granaries, to that most impure of
gluttons, the taster of your lusts, to that most needy and most impious man,
Sextus Clodius, the companion of your family, who by his tongue alienated
even your sister from you. And it was by this action of yours that dearness
was first produced, and afterwards scarcity. Famine, conflagration,
bloodshed, and pillage were impending. Your insane frenzy was threatening
the fortunes and property of every man.
[26]
That ill-omened pest of the state even complains that the corn should have
been taken out of the impure mouth of Sextus Clodius, and that the republic
in its extremest peril should have implored the aid of that man by whom it
recollected that it had often been preserved, and had its power
extended. Clodius thinks that nothing ought to be done out of the regular
course. What! what sort of law is it that you say that you passed about me,
you parricide, you fratricide, you murderer of your sister; did you not pass
that out of the regular course? Was it lawful for you to pass, I will not
say a law, but a wicked private bill, concerning the ruin of a citizen, the
preserver of the republic, as all gods and men have long since agreed to
call him, and, as you yourself confess, when he was not only uncondemned but
even unimpeached, amid the mourning of the senate and the lamentation of all
good men, rejecting the prayers of all Italy, while the republic lay oppressed and captive at your
feet? And was it not lawful for me, when the Roman people implored me, when
the senate requested me, when the critical state of the republic demanded it
of me, to deliver an opinion concerning the safety of the Roman people?
[27]
And if that opinion the dignity of
Cnaeus Pompeius was increased, in connection with the common advantage,
certainly I ought to be praised if I seemed to have given my vote for honour
of that than who had brought his influence to aid in the ensuring of my
safety.
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