This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[23]
you rejoice at this; let us see what it is that
excites your indignation.
‘“That Dolabella should at this time have been
pronounced a public enemy because he has slain an assassin; and that the son
of a buffoon should appear dearer to the Roman people than Caius Caesar, the
father of his country, are circumstances to be lamented.”’
Why should you be sad because Dolabella has been pronounced a public enemy? Why?
Are you not aware that you yourself—by the fact of an enlistment
having taken place all over Italy, and
of the consuls being sent forth to war, and of Caesar having received great
honors, and of the garb of war having been assumed—have also been
pronounced an enemy? And what reason is there, O you wicked man, for lamenting
that Dolabella has been declared an enemy by the senate? a body which you indeed
think of no consequence at all; but you make it your main object in waging war
utterly to destroy the senate, and to make all the rest of those who are either
virtuous or wealthy follow the fate of the highest order of all. But he calls
him the son of a buffoon. As if that noble Roman knight the father of Trebonius
were unknown to us. And does he venture to look down on any one because of the
meanness of his birth, when he has himself children by Fadia?
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.