[39]
And did you not even then, my great Paullus,1 dare to send expresses to Rome crowned with laurel? Yes, says he, I
sent them. Did you? Who ever read them? who ever demanded to have them read?
For it makes no difference, as far as my argument is concerned, whether you,
being overwhelmed by the consciousness of your wicked actions, never dared
to write any letters to that body which you had treated with contempt, which
you had ill-treated, which you had sought to destroy, or whether your
friends concealed your letters, and by their silence expressed their
condemnation of your rashness and audacity. And I do not know whether I
should not prefer that you should appear so utterly destitute of all shame
as to have sent the letters, and that your friends should appear to have had
more modesty and more sense than yourself, rather than that you should seem
to have had some little modesty, and that your conduct should not have been
condemned by the judgment of your friends.
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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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