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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
8.
[23]
O ye immortal gods! where are the habits and virtues of our forefathers? Caius
Popillius, in the time of our ancestors, when he had been sent as ambassador to
Antiochus the king, and had given him notice, in the words of the senate, to
depart from Alexandria, which he
was besieging, on the king's seeking to delay giving his answer, drew a line
round him where he was standing with his rod, and stated that he should report
him to the senate if he did not answer him as to what he intended to do before
he moved out of that line which surrounded him. He did well. For he had brought
with him the countenance of the senate, and the authority of the Roman people;
and if a man does not obey that, we are not to receive commands from him in
return, but he is to be utterly rejected.
[24]
Am
I to receive commands from a man who despises the commands of the senate? Or am
I to think that he has any thing in common with the senate, who besieges a
general of the Roman people in spite of the prohibition of the senate? But what
commands they are! With what arrogance, with what stupidity, with what insolence
are they conceived! But what made him charge our ambassadors with them when he
was sending Cotyla to us, the ornament and bulwark of his friends, a man of
aedilitian rank? if, indeed, he really was an aedile at the time when the public
slaves flogged him with thongs at a banquet by command of Antonius.
[25]
But what modest commands they are! We must be iron-hearted men, O conscript
fathers, to deny any thing to this man! “I give up both
provinces,” says he; “I disband my army; I am willing to
become a private individual.” For these are his very words. He seems
to be coming to himself. “I am willing to forget everything; to be
reconciled to every body.” But what does he add? “If you
give booty and land to my six legions, to my cavalry, and to my praetorian
cohort.” He even demands rewards for those men for whom, if he were to
demand pardon, he would be thought the most impudent of men. He adds farther,
“Those men to whom the lands have been given which he himself and
Dolabella distributed, are to retain them.”
[26]
This is the Campanian and Leontine district, both which our
ancestors considered a certain resource in times of scarcity.
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