33.
But if the injury inflicted on them by their enemies was not any disgrace to
those men who were expelled unjustly, but still who were restored according
to law, after their enemies had been slain, after the tribunes had brought
forward motions respecting them; not by the authority of the senate, not by
the comitia centuriata, not by the decrees of
all Italy, not by the universal
regret of the state; do you think that in my case, who departed uncondemned,
who departed at the same time as the republic, and returned with the
greatest dignity, while you were still alive, while one of your brothers was
one of the consuls who brought me back, and the other was the praetor who
demanded my recall, your wickedness ought to be any discredit to me? And if
the Roman people, being inflamed with passion or envy, had driven me out of
the city, and afterwards, remembering my services to the republic, had
recollected itself; and shown its repentance for its rashness and injustice
by restoring me; yet, in truth, no one would have been so senseless, as to
think that such conduct on the part of the people ought not rather to be
considered an honour to me than a disgrace.
[88]
But now, when of all the people no one has accused me, when it is
impossible for me to have been condemned, seeing that I have never been
accused, since I was not even expelled in such a way that I could not have
got the better of my adversaries if I had contested the point with them by
force; and when, on the other hand, I have at all times been defrauded and
praised and honoured by the Roman people; what pretence has any one for
thinking himself better off than I am, at all events as far as the people
are concerned?
[89]
Do you think that the Roman people consists of these men who can be hired for
any purpose? who are easily instigated to offer violence to magistrates? to
besiege the senate? to wish every day for bloodshed, conflagration and
plunder? people, indeed, whom you could not possibly collect together unless
you shut up all the taverns; a people to whom you gave the Lentidii, and
Lollii, and Plaguleii, and Sergii, for leaders. Oh for the splendour and
dignity of the Roman people, for kings, for foreign nations, for the most
distant lands to fear; a multitude collected of slaves, of
hirelings, of, criminals, and beggars!
[90]
That was the real beauty and splendour of the Roman people, which you beheld
in the Campus Martius at that time,
when even you were allowed to speak in opposition to the authority and
wishes of the senate and of all Italy. That is the people—that, I say, is the
people which is the lord of kings, the conqueror and commander-in-chief of
all nations, which you, O wicked man, beheld in that most illustrious day
when all the chief men of the city, when all men of all ranks and ages
considered themselves as giving their votes, not about the safety of a
citizen, but about that of the state; when men arrive into the Campus, the
municipal towns having been all emptied, not the taverns.
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