[78]
Is it probable that a Roman citizen, or that any free
man, should have descended with a sword into the forum before daybreak, in
order to prevent a law from being passed respecting me, unless he were one
of those men who have been fattened up this long time on the blood of the
republic by that destructive and wicked citizen?
Here now I ask the prosecutor himself, who complains that Sestius used to
keep a great multitude and a large guard about him during his tribuneship,
whether he had them with him on that day? Certainly, most
undeniably, he had not; and therefore the party of the republic was
defeated; and it was defeated, not by unfavourable auspices, not by any exercise of the veto, not by the
suffrages of any assembly, but by violence, by force of arms, by bloodshed.
For if the praetor had given notice to Fabricius, and had said that he was
observing the auspices, the republic would have
received a blow, but still one which it could have lamented. If his
colleague had interrupted Fabricius with his veto, he would have injured the
republic, but still he would have injured the republic in a legal and
regular manner. Are you to send raw gladiators, got together in expectation
of the aedileship, with a pack of assassins let loose out of the jails, into
the forum before dawn? Are you to drive the magistrates down from the
temple? Are you to cause a great massacre? to desolate the forum? and then,
when you have carried everything by violence and arms, to accuse a man who
has protected himself with a guard, not for the purpose of opposing you, but
of defending his own life?
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