This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
5.
He possesses three towns only on the whole face of the earth. He has Gaul most bitterly hostile to him; he has even
those men the people beyond the Po, in whom he placed the greatest reliance,
entirely alienated from him; all Italy
is his enemy. Foreign nations, from the nearest coast of Greece to Egypt, are occupied by the military command and armies of most
virtuous and intrepid citizens. His only hope was in Caius Antonius; who being
in age the middle one between his two brothers, rivaled both of them in vices.
He hastened away as if he were being driven away by the senate into Macedonia, not as if he were prohibited from
proceeding thither.
[11]
What a storm, O ye
immortal gods! what a conflagration! what a devastation! what a pestilence to
Greece would that man have been, if
incredible and godlike virtue had not checked the enterprise and audacity of
that frantic man. What promptness was there in Brutus's conduct! what prudence!
what valor! Although the rapidity of the movement of Caius Antonius also is not
despicable; for if some vacant inheritances had not delayed him on his march,
you might have said that he had flown rather than traveled. When we desire other
men to go forth to undertake any public business, we are scarcely able to get
them out of the city; but we have driven this man out by the mere fact of our
desiring to retain him. But what business had he with Apollonia? what business had he with
Dyrrachium? or with Illyricum? What had he to do with the army of
Publius Vatinius, our general? He, as he said himself, was the successor of
Hortensius. The boundaries of Macedonia
are well defined; the condition of the proconsul is well known; the amount of
his army, if he has any at all, is fixed. But what had Antonius to do at all
with Illyricum and with the legions of
Vatinius?
But Brutus had nothing to do with them either. For that, perhaps, is what some
worthless man may say.
[12]
All the legions, all
the forces which exist any where, belong to the Roman people. Nor shall those
legions which have quitted Marcus Antonius be called the legions of Antonius
rather than of the republic; for he loses all power over his army, and all the
privileges of military command, who uses that military command and that army to
attack the republic.
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.