[43]
Did Milo then, keeping in view this long hoped-for and wished-for day of the
Campus Martius, propose to himself to come to those venerable auspices of the centuries with bloody hands, owning
and confessing a wickedness and a crime? How perfectly incredible is such
conduct in such a man! At the same time how undoubted is it in the case of
Clodius, who thought that he should be a king as soon as Milo was slain.
What shall I say more? This is the very mainspring of audacity, O judges,
for who is there who does not know that the greatest temptation of all to do
wrong is the hope of impiety? Now in which of the two did this exist? In
Milo? who is even now on his trial for an action which I contend was an
illustrious one, but which was at all events a necessary one, or in Clodius,
who had shown such contempt for court's of justice and punishment that he
took no pleasure in anything which was not either impious, from its
disregard of the prohibitions of nature, or illegal, from its violation of
law.
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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