This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[9]
Those men had learned to obey
kings ever since the foundation of the city, but we from the time when the kings
were driven out have forgotten how to be slaves. And that Tarquinius, whom our
ancestors expelled, was not either considered or called cruel or impious, but
only The Proud. That vice which we have often borne in private individuals, our
ancestors could not endure even in a king.
Lucius Brutus could not endure a proud king. Shall Decimus Brutus submit to the
kingly power of a man who is wicked and impious? What atrocity did Tarquinius
ever commit equal to the innumerable acts of the sort which Antonius has done
and is still doing? Again, the kings were used to consult the senate; nor, as is
the ease when Antonius holds a senate, were armed barbarians ever introduced
into the council of the king. The kings paid due regard to the auspices, which
this man, though consul and augur, has neglected, not only by passing laws in
opposition to the auspices but also by making his colleague (whom he himself had
appointed irregularly, and had falsified the auspices in order to do so) join in
passing them.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.