[85]
The forum had been taken in the preceding year; the temple of Castor having
been occupied by runaway slaves, as if it had been a fortress! not a word
was said against such conduct. Everything was done by the clamour and
impetuosity, and violence, and assaults of men desperate through indigence
and through their natural audacity. And you endured that it should be so.
The magistrates were driven from the temples; others were altogether cut off
from all approach to them or to the forum. No one offered any resistance.
Gladiators were taken out of the praetor's train and introduced into the
senate and confessed that they had been thrown into prison by Milo, that they had been released by
Serranus. Yet no mention was made of these things. The forum was strewed
with the corpses of Roman citizens murdered in a nocturnal massacre. There
not only was no new sort of investigation into such events instituted, but
even the old courts of justice were abolished. You saw a tribune of the
people lying down stricken to the ground with more than twenty wounds and
almost dead; the house of another tribune of the people, a man of godlike
virtue (for I will say what I think myself, and what all men agree with me in thinking,) a man of most eminent, unheard-of,
unprecedented greatness of mind, and wisdom, and integrity, was attacked
with fire and sword by the army of Clodius.
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