23.
[59]
For what injury had my unhappy wife done to you? whom you harassed and
plundered and ill-treated with every description of cruelty. What harm had
my daughter done to you? whose incessant weeping and mourning and misery
were so agreeable to you, though they moved the eyes and feelings of every
one else. What had my little son done? whom no one ever saw all the time
that I was away, that he was not weeping and lamenting; what, I say, had he
done that you should so often try to murder him by stratagem? What had my
brother done? who, when, some time after my departure, he arrived from his
province and thought that it was not worth his while to live unless I were
restored to him, when his chief and excessive and unprecedented mourning
seemed to render him an object of pity to every one, was constantly attacked
by you with arms and violence, he escaped with difficulty out of your hands.
[60]
But why need I dilate upon your
cruelty which you have displayed towards me and mine? when you have waged a
horrible and nefarious war, dyed with every description of hatred against my
walls, my roofs, my pillars and door-posts. For I do not think that you,
when, after my departure, you in the covetousness of your hopes had devoured
the fortunes of all the rich men, the produce of all the provinces, the
property of tetrarchs and of kings, were blinded by the desire of my plate
and furniture. I do not think that that Campanian consul with his dancing
colleague, after you had sacrificed to the one all Achaia, Thessaly, Boeotia,
Greece, Macedonia and all the countries of the
barbarians, and the property of the Roman citizens in those countries, and
when you had delivered up to the other Sulla, Babylon, and the Persians those hitherto uninjured and
peaceful nations, to plunder, I do not think, I say, that they were covetous
of my thresholds and pillars and folding doors.
[61]
Nor, indeed, did the bands and forces of Catiline think
that they could appease their hunger with the tiles and mortar of my roofs.
But as, without being influenced by the idea of booty, still out of hatred
we are accustomed to destroy the cities of enemies;—not of all
enemies indeed, but of those with whom we have waged any bitter and
intestine war; because when our minds have been inflamed against any people
by reason of their cruelty, there always appears to be some war still
lingering in their abodes and habitations,
* * *
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