1.
Yesterday, O conscript fathers, when I was greatly moved by the thoughts of
your dignity, and of the great attendance of the Roman knights to whom a
senate was given, I thought myself bound to check the shameless impudence of
Publius Clodius, when he was hindering the cause of the publicans from being
proceeded with by the most foolish possible questions, and was
studying to save Publius Tullio the Syrian and was, even before your eyes
selling himself to him to whom, indeed, he had already been entirely sold.
Therefore I checked the man in his frenzy and exultation, the very moment
that I gave him a hint of the danger of a public trial; and by two
half-uttered words I bridled all the violence and ferocity of that
gladiator.
[2]
But he, ignorant what sort of men the consuls were, pale and fuming with me
burst on a sudden out of the senate house, with some broken and empty
threats and with those denunciations with which he used to terrify us in the
time of Piso and Gabinius. And when
I began to press upon him, as he was departing, I received the greatest
reward of my exertions by all of you rising up at the same time with me, and
by all the publicans thronging round me to escort me. But that senseless man
stopped on a sudden out of countenance, colourless, and voiceless; then he
looked back; and, as soon as he beheld Cnaeus Lentulus1 the consul, he fell down
almost on the threshold of the senate house from the recollection, I
imagine, of his dear friend Gabinius and from regret for Piso. And why need I speak at all of his
unbridled and headlong fury? He cannot be wounded by me with more severe
language than he was on the instant being crushed and overwhelmed at the
very moment of his acting in that manner by Publius Servilius. And even if I
were able to equal the extraordinary and almost divine energy and dignity of
that man, still I cannot doubt that those weapons which out enemy hurled at
him would appear less powerful and less sharp than those which the colleague
of his father aimed at him.
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1 This is not the same Lentulus as had been consul the preceding year. This was Cnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus; the former consul was Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther.
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