14.
[32]
The senate then was in grief, the city wore an appearance of mourning, its
garments having been changed in accordance with the public resolution of the
senate. There was no municipal town in all Italy, no colony, no prefecture, no company of men
concerned in farming the public revenues, no guild or council,—no
public body, in short, of any kind whatever,—which had not passed
most honourable resolutions concerning my safety, when all on a sudden the
two consuls issue an edict that the senators are to return to their former
dress. What consul ever prohibited the senate from obeying its own decrees?
What tyrant ever forbade men who were miserable to mourn? Is it a small
thing, O Piso,—for I will say nothing about Gabinius, that you
have deceived men to such a degree as to disregard the authority of the
senate? to despise the advice of every virtuous man? to betray
the republic? to crush a citizen of consular rank? that you must dare also
to issue an edict that men are not to mourn for a disaster affecting me, and
themselves, and the republic, and are not to show their grief by changing
their garments? Whether that change of garment was assumed as a token of
grief, or as a form of solicitation, who ever was so cruel before as to
forbid any one mourning for himself, or entreating for others?
[33]
What? Are not men accustomed of their own accord
to change their garments on the occasion of danger to their friends? Is
there no one who will change it ever for you, O Piso? will not even those
men do so whom you have appointed as your lieutenants, not only without any
resolution of the senate to authorize such a step, but even in defiance of a
vote of that body? shall, then, whoever pleases mourn for the misfortune of
a desperate man, of a traitor to the commonwealth, and shall not the senate
be allowed to mourn for the danger of a citizen, strong above all men in the
good-will of all virtuous men, who has deserved admirably well of his
country, which he has saved, especially when with his danger is combined
danger to the whole state?
Those same consuls, (if, indeed, it is proper to call those men consuls who,
every one thinks, deserve not only to be eradicated from men's memories, but
to have their names erased from the consular registers,) after the treaty
about the provinces had been ratified, being brought forward to the assembly
in the Flaminian Circus by that fury and pest of his country, amid universal
grief on the part of all of you, gave their verbal sanction and formal
decision in approval of all the things which that fellow had then uttered
against me and against the republic.
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