1.
Many things, O priests, have been devised and established with divine wisdom
by our ancestors; but no action of theirs was ever more wise than their
determination that the same men should superintend both what relates to the
religious worship due to the immortal gods, and also what concerns the
highest interests of the state, so that they might preserve the republic as
the most honourable and eminent of the citizens, by governing it well, and
as priests by wisely interpreting the requirements of religion. But if there
has ever been a time when an important cause has depended on the decision
and power of the priests of the Roman people, this indeed is that cause;
being such that the dignity of the whole republic, the safety of all the
citizens, their lives, their liberties, their altars, their hearths, their
household gods, their properties and condition as citizens, and their homes,
all appear to be committed and entrusted to your wisdom integrity, and
power.
[2]
You have got to decide this day
whether you prefer for the future to deprive frantic and profligate
magistrates of the protection of wicked and unprincipled citizens, or even
to arm them with the cloak of religion and of the respect due to the
immortal gods. For if that pest and conflagration of the republic succeeds
in defending his own mischievous and fatal tribunate by appeals to divine
religion, when he cannot maintain it by any considerations of human equity,
then we must seek for other ceremonies, for other ministers of the immortal
gods, for other interpreters of the requirements of religion. But if those
things which were done by the madness of wicked men in the republic at a
time when it was oppressed by one party, deserted by another, and betrayed
by a third, are annulled by your authority and your wisdom, O priests, then
we shall have cause rightly and deservedly to praise the wisdom of our
ancestors in selecting the most honourable men of the state for the
priesthood.
[3]
But since that madman has thought that he
should find a ready road to your attention by blaming the sentiments that I
in the last few days have expressed in the senate concerning the republic, I
will deviate from the natural arrangement of my speech, and I will make a
reply to what I will not call the speech of that furious fellow, (for that
is more than he is capable of,) but to his abuse, that being an employment
which he has fortified himself in the practice of by his own intolerable bad
temper, and by the length of time that he has been allowed to indulge it
with impunity.
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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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