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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
5.
You must, therefore, preserve your consistency, your wisdom, your firmness, your
perseverance. You must go back to the old-fashioned severity, if at least the
authority of the senate is anxious to establish its credit, its honor, its
renown, and its dignity, things which this order has been too long deprived of.
But there was some time ago some excuse for it, as being oppressed; a miserable
excuse indeed, but still a fair one; now there is none. We appeared to have been
delivered from kingly tyranny; and afterward we were oppressed much more
severely by domestic enemies. We did indeed turn their arms aside; we must now
wrest them from their hands. And if we can not do so (I will say what it becomes
one who is both a senator and a Roman to say), let us die.
[15]
For how just will be the shame, how great will be the
disgrace, how great the infamy to the republic, if Marcus Antonius can deliver
his opinion in this assembly from the consular bench. For, to say nothing of the
countless acts of wickedness committed by him while consul in the city, during
which time he has squandered a vast amount of public money, restored exiles
without any law, sold our revenues to all sorts of people, removed provinces
from the empire of the Roman people, given men kingdoms for bribes, imposed laws
on the city by violence, besieged the senate, and, at other times, excluded it
from the senate-house by force of arms;—to say nothing, I say, of all
this, do you not consider this, that he who has attacked Mutina, a most powerful colony of the Roman
people—who has besieged a general of the Roman people, who is consul
elect—who has laid waste the lands,—do you not consider, I
say, how shameful and iniquitous a thing it would be for that man to be received
into this order, by which he has been so repeatedly pronounced an enemy for
these very reasons?
[16]
I have said enough of the shamefulness of such a proceeding; I will now speak
next, as I proposed, of the danger of it; which, although it is not so important
to avoid as shame, still offends the minds of the greater part of mankind even
more.
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