42.
And on this account that man's madness is the more to be rejected by your
ears who has not only attacked in a manner contrary to all religion those
things which our ancestors intended to be safe and hallowed among us, as
guarded by the sanction of religion, but has even made use of the name of
religion to overturn them.
[110]
And what goddess is she whom you have
established there? She ought indeed to be the good goddess; since she has
been consecrated by you. “She is Liberty,” says he. Have
you then established her in my house whom you have driven out of the whole
city? Did you, after you had denied that your colleagues,—men
invested with the highest power,—were free; after you had closed
all access to the temple of Castor against every one; after you had ordered
in the hearing of the Roman people, this most illustrious man, of a most
noble family, who has received the greatest honours from the Roman people, a
priest, and a man of consular rank, a citizen of singular gentleness and
modesty of character, (a man of whom I cannot sufficiently wonder how you
can dare to look him in the face,) to be kicked and trampled on by your
attendants; after you had driven him out of the city without being
condemned, having proposed a most tyrannical privilegium against him; after you had confined the first man
in the whole earth to his house; after you had occupied the forum with armed
bands of profligate men;—did you then place the image of Liberty
in that house, which was of itself a proof of your most cruel tyranny and of
the miserable slavery of the Roman people? Was he the man whom Liberty
ought, of all men in the world, to have driven from his house, whose
existence was the only thing that prevented the whole city from coming under
the power of slaves?
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