M. Tullius Cicero, Orations, The fourteen orations against Marcus Antonius (Philippics)
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

But perhaps we, who are his colleagues, may be the interpreters of the auspices? Do we also want interpreters of arms? In the first place, all the approaches to the forum were so fenced round, that even if no armed men were standing in the way, still it would have been impossible to enter the forum except by tearing down the barricades. But the guards were arranged in such a manner, that, as the access of an enemy to a city is prevented, so you might in this instance see the burgesses and the tribunes of the people cut off by forts and works from all entrance to the forum. [10] On which account I give my vote that those laws which Marcus Antonius is said to have carried were all carried by violence, and in violation of the auspices; and that the people is not bound by them. If Marcus Antonius is said to have carried any law about confirming the acts of Caesar and abolishing the dictatorship forever, and of leading colonies into any lands, then I vote that those laws be passed over again, with a due regard to the auspices, so that they may bind the people. For although they may be good measures which he passed irregularly and by violence, still they are not to be accounted laws, and the whole audacity of this frantic gladiator must he repudiated by our authority. [11] But that squandering of the public money can not possibly be endured by which he got rid of seven hundred millions of sesterces by forged entries and deeds of gifts, so that it seems an absolute miracle that so vast a sum of money belonging to the Roman people can have disappeared in so short a time. What? are those enormous profits to be endured which the household of Marcus Antonius has swallowed up? He was continually selling forged decrees; ordering the names of kingdoms and states, and grants of exemptions to be engraved on brass, having received bribes for such orders. And his statement always was, that he was doing these things in obedience to the memoranda of Caesar, of which he himself was the author. In the interior of his house there was going on a brisk market of the whole republic. His wife, more fortunate for herself than for her husband, was holding an auction of kingdoms and provinces: exiles were restored without any law, as if by law: and unless all these acts are rescinded by the authority of the senate, now that we have again arrived at a hope of recovering the republic, there will be no likeness of a free city left to us. [12]

Nor is it only by the sale of forged memoranda and autographs that a countless sum of money was collected together in that house, while Antonius, whatever he sold, said that he was acting in obedience to the papers of Caesar; but he even took bribes to make false entries of the resolutions of the senate; to seal forged contracts; and resolutions of the senate that had never been passed were entered on the records of that treasury. Of all this baseness even foreign nations were witnesses. In the meantime treaties were made; kingdoms given away; nations and provinces released from the burdens of the state; and false memorials of all these transactions were fixed up all over the Capitol, amid the groans of the Roman people. And by all these proceedings so vast a sum of money was collected in one house, that if it were all made available, the Roman people would never want money again.