34.
He does not dissemble, O conscript fathers; it is plain that he is agitated; he
perspires; he turns pale. Let him do what he pleases, provided he is not sick,
and does not behave as be did in the Minucian colonnade. What defence can be
made for such beastly behaviour? I wish to hear, that I may see the fruit of
those high wages of that rhetorician, of that land given in Leontini.
[
85]
Your colleague was sitting in the rostra, clothed in
purple robe, on a golden chair, wearing a crown. You mount the steps; you
approach his chair, (if you were a priest of Pan, you ought to have recollected
that you were consul too;) you display a diadem; There is a groan over the whole
forum. Where did the diadem come from? For you had not picked it up when lying
on the ground, but you had brought it from home with you, a premeditated and
deliberately planned wickedness. You placed the diadem on his head amid the
groans of the people; he rejected it amid great applause. You then alone, O
wicked man, were found both to advise the assumption of kingly power, and to
wish to have him for your master who was your colleague and also to try what the
Roman people might be able to bear and to endure.
[
86]
Moreover, you even sought to move his pity; you threw
yourself at his feet as a suppliant; begging for what? to be a slave? You might
beg it for yourself, when you had lived in such a way from the time that you
were a boy that you could bear everything, and would find no difficulty in being
a slave; but certainly you had no commission from the Roman people to try for
such a thing for them.
Oh how splendid was that eloquence of yours, when you harangued the people stark
naked! what could be more foul than this? more shameful than this? more
deserving of every sort of punishment? Are you waiting for me to prick you more?
This that I am saying must tear you and bring blood enough if you have any
feeling at all. I am afraid that I may be detracting from the glory of some most
eminent men. Still my indignation shall find a voice. What can be more
scandalous than for that man to live who placed a diadem on a man's head, when
every one confesses that that man was deservedly slain who rejected it?
[
87]
And, moreover, he caused it to be
recorded in the annals, under the head of Lupercalia, “That Marcus
Antonius, the consul, by command of the people, had offered the kingdom to Caius
Caesar, perpetual dictator; and that Caesar had refused to accept it.”
I now am not much surprised at your seeking to disturb the general tranquillity;
at your hating not only the city but the light of day; and at your living with a
pack of abandoned robbers, disregarding the day, and yet regarding nothing
beyond the day.
1 For where can
you be safe in peace? What place can there be for you where laws and courts of
justice have sway, both of which you, as far as in you lay, destroyed by the
substitution of kingly power? Was it for this that Lucius Tarquinius was driven
out; that Spurius Cassius, and Spurius Maelius, and Marcus Manlius were slain;
that many years afterwards a king might be established at
Rome by Marcus Antonius though the bare idea
was impiety? How ever, let us return to the auspices.