[52]
In the first place, there is no danger of any one ever falling in with
such consuls as these, especially if these are requited as they deserve. In
the second place, there never will again, I hope, be an instance of any
wicked man saying that he is attacking the republic with the approval and
assistance of virtuous citizens, while they keep silence; nor of such a
man's threatening citizens in the garb of peace with the terrors of an armed
soldiery; nor will there be any excuse for a general stationed with his army
at the gates, allowing the terror of his name to be used as an instrument
for opposing and alarming the citizens. For the senate will never be so
oppressed as to have no power of even entreating or lamenting; the
equestrian order will never be bound hand and foot so completely as to allow
Roman knights to be banished by the consul. But yet even after all these
things had happened, and many other more important events also, which I pass
over designedly, still you see that, after a short interval of suffering, I
was recalled to the enjoyment of my former dignity by the voice of the
republic.
This text is part of:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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