[170]
It is a crime to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is a wickedness; to put him
to death is almost parricide. What shall I say of crucifying him? So guilty an
action cannot by any possibility be adequately expressed by any name bad enough for
it. Yet with all this that man was not content. “Let him behold his
country,” said he; “let him die within sight of laws and
liberty.” It was not Gavius, it was not one individual, I know not
whom,—it was not one Roman citizen,—it was the common cause of
freedom and citizenship that you exposed to that torture and nailed on that cross.
But now consider the audacity of the man. Do not you think that he was indignant
that be could not erect that cross for Roman citizens in the forum, in the comitium,
in the very rostra? For the place in his province which was the most like those
places in celebrity, and the nearest to them in point of distance, he did select. He
chose that monument of his wickedness and audacity to be in the sight of Italy, in the very vestibule of Sicily, within sight of all passers-by as they
sailed to and fro.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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