M. Tullius Cicero, Against Piso
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

Are you aware what you are saying, to whom and of whom you are saying it? You are implicating most honourable men in your and Gabinius's wickedness, and that without any disguise. For a little while before you say that I was contending against men whom I despised; but that I was leaving those men alone who had more influence, though they were the men with whom I ought to be angry. But as for those men, (for who is there who is not aware whom you mean?) although the case of them all is not the same, still I have no cause of complaint against any of them. [76]

Cnaeus Pompeius, though many men have fried to oppose his zeal for and attachment to my interests, has always had a regard for me; has always considered me entirely worthy of his intimacy; has always wished me to be not merely safe, but loaded with as much honour and distinction as possible. It is the dishonesty of you and your friends—it is your wickedness, your accusations against me, as if I were cherishing treacherous designs and he were in danger,—accusations most wickedly invented, and at the same time the accusations of those men who, abusing the liberty which their friendship with him gave them, contrived a home for their most infamous statements in his ears, at your instigation, and it is your desires of provinces which caused me to be excluded from his house, and all the men who were anxious for the preservation of his glory, and of the republic, to be cut off from all conversation with and all access to him. [77] And by all these measures it was brought about that he was prevented from abiding by what was notoriously his own opinion, while certain men had (I will not say wholly alienated his affections from me, but had) checked his eagerness to be of assistance to me.

Did not Lucius Lentulus, who was at that time praetor, did not Quintus Sanga, did not Lucius Torquatus the father, did not Marcus Lucullus come to you? All of whom, and many others, had come to him, at his house on the Alban Hill, to pray and entreat him not to desert my fortune, which was bound up with the safety of the republic. And he sent those men to you and to your colleague, that you might espouse the public cause, and submit a motion to the senate. He said, that he was unwilling to enter into a contest with a tribune of the people in arms, unless he had a public resolution on his side; but that if the consuls were defending the republic in obedience to a resolution of the senate, then he would take up arms. [78] Do you at all recollect you wretch, what answer you gave? an answer at which all those men, but especially Torquatus above all, were in a fury at the insolence of your reply, when you said that you were not as brave as Torquatus had been in his consulship, or as I had been; that there was no need of arms, nor of a contest; that it was in my power a second time to save the republic by yielding to the storm; that there would be endless bloodshed if I resisted; and at the last he said, that neither he nor his son-in-law nor his colleague would desert the tribune of the people. And now, you enemy and traitor, do you say that I ought to be a more determined enemy to any one else than to you?