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22.
It was you, you, I say, O Marcus Antonius, who gave Caius Caesar, desirous as he
already was to throw every thing into confusion, the principal pretext for
waging war against his country. For what other pretense did he allege? what
cause did he give for his own most frantic resolution and action, except that
the power of interposition by the veto had been disregarded, the privileges of
the tribunes taken away, and Antonius's rights abridged by the senate? I say
nothing of how false, how trivial these pretenses were; especially when there
could not possibly be any reasonable cause whatever to justify any one in taking
up arms against his country. But I have nothing to do with Caesar. You must
unquestionably allow that the cause of that ruinous war existed in your person.
[54]
O miserable man if you are aware, more miserable still if you are not aware, that
this is recorded in writings, is handed down to men's recollection, that our
very latest posterity in the most distant ages will never forget this fact, that
the consuls were expelled from Italy,
and with them Cnaeus Pompeius, who was the glory and light of the empire of the
Roman people; that all the men of consular rank, whose health would allow them
to share in that disaster and that flight, and the praetors, and men of
praetorian rank, and the tribunes of the people, and a great part of the senate,
and all the flower of the youth of the city, and, in a word, the republic itself
was driven out and expelled from its abode.
[55]
As, then, there is in seeds the cause which produces trees and plants, so of
this most lamentable war you were the seed. Do you, O conscript fathers, grieve
that these armies of the Roman people have been slain? It is Antonius who slew
them. Do you regret your most illustrious citizens? It is Antonius, again, who
has deprived you of them. The authority of this order is overthrown; it is
Antonius who has overthrown it. Everything, in short, which we have seen since
that time (and what misfortune is there that we have not seen?) we shall, if we
argue rightly, attribute wholly to Antonius. As Helen was to the Trojans, so has
that man been to this republic,—the cause of war the cause of mischief
the cause of ruin The rest of his tribuneship was like the beginning. He did
every thing which the senate had labored to prevent, as being impossible to be
done consistently with the safety of the republic. And see, now, how
gratuitously wicked he was even in accomplishing his wickedness.
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