[27]
Alas for that day, O judges, fatal to the senate and to all good men!
grievous to the republic! bitter for me as far as my domestic grief was
concerned, but glorious as relates to my fame in the eyes of posterity. For
what since the first beginning of human memory, can any one produce more
splendid than for all good men by their own tacit agreement as individuals
and for the whole senate by public resolution to have changed their garments
and put on mourning for the sake of a single citizen? And that change of
dress was not adopted at that time for the sake of averting a calamity from
me by entreaty, but to show their grief at that which had befallen me. For
to whom could they address their entreaties, when all were in mourning
alike, and when the fact of a man's not having changed his dress was a
sufficient proof of his being an ill-disposed person? After this change of
garments had taken place, and while the city was in such grief, I say
nothing of what that tribune, that plunderer of all things both human and
divine, proceeded to do; a fellow who ordered all the most noble youths, and
the most honourable Roman knights who were eager to entreat him to ensure my
safety, to attend at his house, and who then exposed them to the swords and
stones of his troop of artisans. I am speaking now of the consuls, on whose
good faith the republic had a right to rely.
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