[40]
But the matter of the auspices, which I am now touching on with extreme brevity,
has been handled in this manner by you. You, when your tribuneship was in
danger and was falling to pieces as it were, all of a sudden came forward as
a patron of the auspices; you brought forward
Marcus Bibulus and the augurs into the assembly; you questioned the augurs,
and they replied that when any magistrates was observing the heavens, no
business could be transacted in the assembly of the people. You questioned
Marcus Bibulus, and he told you in reply that he had been observing the
heavens; and he also said in the public assembly, when he was brought
forward there by your brother Appius, that you were no tribune of the people
at all, because you had been adopted contrary to the auspices. In the succeeding months your language constantly
was, that everything which Caius Caesar had done ought to be rescinded by
the senate, because they had been done in disregard of the auspices; and if they were rescinded, you said that
you would bring me back on your own shoulders into the city as the guardian
of the city. See now, O priests, the insanity of the man when by means of
his tribuneship he was connected to such an extent with the acts of Caesar.
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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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