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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
16.
However, let us say no more of war in which you were too fortunate. I will not
reply even with those jests to which you have said that I gave utterance in the
camp. That camp was in truth full of anxiety, but although men are in great
difficulties, still, provided they are men, they sometimes relax their minds.
[40]
But the fact that the same man finds
fault with my melancholy, and also with my jokes, is a great proof that I was
very moderate in each particular.
You have said that no inheritances come to me. Would that this accusation of
yours were a true one; I should have more of my friends and connections alive.
But how could such a charge ever come into your head? For I have received more
than twenty millions of sesterces in inheritances. Although in this particular I
admit that you have been more fortunate than I. No one has ever made me his heir
except he was a friend of mine, in order that my grief of mind for his loss
might be accompanied also with some gain, if it was to be considered as such.
But a man whom you never even saw, Lucius Rubrius, of Casinum, made you his heir.
[41]
And see now how much he loved you, who, though he
did not know whether you were white or black, passed over the son of his
brother, Quintus Fufius, a most honorable Roman knight, and most attached to
him, whom he had on all occasions openly declared his heir (he never even names
him in his will), and he makes you his heir whom he had never seen, or at all
events had never spoken to.
I wish you would tell me, if it is not too much trouble, what sort of countenance
Lucius Turselius was of; what sort of height; from what municipal town he came;
and of what tribe he was a member. “I know nothing,” you
will say, “about him, except what farms he had.” Therefore,
he, disinheriting his brother, made you his heir. And besides these instances,
this man has seized on much other property belonging to men wholly unconnected
with him, to the exclusion of the legitimate heirs, as if he himself were the
heir.
[42]
Although the thing that struck me with
most astonishment of all was, that you should venture to make mention of
inheritances, when you yourself had not received the inheritance of your own
father.
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