40.
[96]
Am I to wait while seventy-five voting tablets are distributed in your case;
when all men of all classes and ages and ranks of society have long since
formed their opinions concerning you? For who is there who thinks you
deserving of a visit; or of any compliment or even of an ordinary
salutation? All men wish to efface all recollection of your consulship, to
extirpate your conduct, your habits, your very appearance and name from the
republic. The lieutenants who were with you are alienated from you, the
military tribunes are hostile to you; the centurions and any other soldiers
who may be left out of that once numerous army, and who were not disbanded
by you but scattered abroad, hate you, wish for calamities to befall you,
execrate you. Achaia which has been drained by you, Thessaly which has been
harassed by you, Athens which has been plundered by you, Dyrrachium and
Apollonia which have been completely emptied by you, Ambracia which has been
pillaged by you, the Parthinians and Bulliensians who have been mocked by
you, Epirus which has been laid waste by you, the Locrians, the Phocians,
the Boeotians whom you have ravaged with fire and sword, Acarnania,
Amphilochia, Perrhaebia, and the nation of the Athamanes who have been sold
by you, Macedonia which has been sacrificed by you to the barbarians,
Aetolia which has been lost, the Dolopians and the neighbouring mountaineers
who have been driven from their towns and from their lands, the Roman
citizens who have dealings as merchants in those countries,—all
feel that you came among them as their chief despoiler, and harasser, and
robber, and enemy.
[97]
To all these numerous and weighty opinions
formed respecting you in this manner, there has been added the private
sentence of condemnation which you have passed upon yourself. Your secret
arrival, your stealthy journey through Italy, your entry into the city
deserted by your friends;—the fact of your sending no letters to
the senate, of your addressing no congratulation to them on successes
achieved by you during the whole of three summer campaigns, of your making
no mention of any triumph;—you do not only omit to say what you
did, but you do not even dare to say where you were.
When you had brought back the dry withered leaves of your
laurels from that fountain and seed-ground of triumphs, when you threw them
down and left them at the gate, then you yourself gave your verdict against
yourself, and pronounced yourself “guilty.” And if you
had done nothing deserving of honour, what had become of your army? where
was the need for all that expense? what did you want with a military
command? why did you seek for that province so fruitful in supplications and
triumphs? But if you had ventured to cherish hopes of anything,—if
you had nourished the thoughts which the name of “Imperator,” the fasces bound with laurel, and those trophies so full of
disgrace and ridicule to you, show that you had entertained,—who
can be more miserable, who more thoroughly condemned than you, who neither
when absent ventured to write to the senate that the affairs of the republic
had been prosperously conducted by you, nor dare to say as much when you are
present?
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