[29]
And when Deiotarus was protecting this
temple in the most holy manner with the deepest feelings of
religion—Deiotarus, of all allies the most faithful to this empire
and the most devoted to our name—you gave it to Brogitarus as I
have said before, having sold it to him for a sum of money. And yet you
order this Deiotarus who has been repeatedly declared by the senate worthy
of the name of king and adorned with the testimony of many most illustrious
generals in his favour, to be styled king together with Brogitarus. But one
of them has been called king by the decision of the senate through my
instrumentality. Brogitarus has been called king by you for money. And I
will think him a king, indeed, if he has any means of paying you what you
have trusted him with on his note of hand. For there are
many royal qualities in Deiotarus; this was the most royal of all, that he
gave you no money; that he did not repudiate that portion of your law which
agreed with the decision of the senate, namely that he was a king; that he
recovered Pessinus, which had been
impiously violated by you and stripped of its priest and its sacrifices, in
order to maintain it in its accustomed religion; that he does not suffer the
ceremonies which have been received as handed down from the most remote
antiquity, to be polluted by Brogitarus; and that he prefers to let his
son-in-law be deprived of your liberality, rather than to allow that temple
to lose the ancient reverence due to its religious character.
But to return to these answers of the soothsayers, the first of which is that
respecting these games; who is there who does not confess that the whole of
that answer and prophecy was delivered with reference to that fellow's
games?
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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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