[4]
“Oh,” says he, “you had
the advantage before the priests, but now you must inevitably get worst off
since you have had recourse to the people.” Is it so? Will you
transfer that which is the greatest defect in the ignorant
multitude,—namely, its fickleness and inconstancy, and change of
opinion, as frequent as the changes of the weather, to these men, whose
gravity protects them from inconsistency, while their fixed and definite
principles of religion and the antiquity of precedents, and the authority of
written records and monuments, effectually deters them from all capricious
change of sentiment? “Are you,” says he, “the
man whom the senate was unable to do without? whom the good lamented? whom
the republic regretted? by whose restoration we expected that the authority
of the senate was restored? and who destroyed that authority the very first
thing you did?” I am not at present speaking of my own matters; I
will first of all reply to your impudence.
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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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