[98]
Do you think that you can possibly appear to be anything but a condemned man
to me, who have always been of opinion that a man's fortune was to be
estimated by his actions themselves, and not by their results, and that our
character and our fortunes depended not on the voting tablets of a few
judges, but on the opinions and judgments of all the citizens? when I see
that the allies, and the people of the federate states, and all free
nations, and all the tributary peoples, and the merchants, and the farmers
of the public revenue, and the whole population of the city, and the
lieutenants, and the military tribunes, and all the soldiers who are left of
your army—as many as have escaped the sword, and famine, and
disease, think you worthy of every extremity of punishment? when no excuse
can be possibly alleged either before the senate, or before any order of men
whatever, or before the Roman knights, or in the city, or in any part of
Italy, sufficient to induce any one to pardon your enormous crimes? when I
see that even you yourself hate yourself, and are afraid of everybody, and
can find no one to whom you can venture to entrust your cause, and by your
own verdict condemn yourself?
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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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