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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
26.
[64]
Caesar came back from Alexandria,
fortunate, as he seemed at least to himself; but in my opinion no one can be
fortunate who is unfortunate for the republic. The spear was set up in front of
the temple of Jupiter Stator, and the property of Cnaeus Pompeius
Magnus—(miserable that I am, for even now that my tears have ceased to
flow, my grief remains deeply implanted in my heart),—the property, I
say, of Cnaeus Pompeius the Great was submitted to the pitiless voice of the
auctioneer. On that one occasion the state forgot its slavery, and groaned
aloud; and though men's minds were enslaved, as every thing was kept under by
fear, still the groans of the Roman people were free. While all men were waiting
to see who would be so impious, who would be so mad, who would be so declared an
enemy to gods and to men as to dare to mix himself up with that wicked auction,
no one was found except Antonius, even though there were plenty of men collected
round that spear1 who
would have dared any thing else.
[65]
One man
alone was found to dare to do that which the audacity of every one else had
shrunk from and shuddered at. Were you, then, seized with such
stupidity,—or, I should rather say, with such insanity,—as
not to see that if you, being of the rank in which you were born, acted as a
broker at all, and above all as a broker in the case of Pompeius property, you
would be execrated and hated by the Roman people, and that all gods and all men
must at once become and for ever continue hostile to you? But with what violence
did that glutton immediately proceed to take possession of the property of that
man, to whose valor it had been owing that the Roman people had been more
terrible to foreign nations, while his justice had made it dearer to them.
1 The custom of erecting a spear wherever an auction was held is well known; it is said to have arisen from the ancient practice of selling under a spear the booty acquired in war.
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