[8]
I, O Romans, know in what condition I received the republic on the first of
January: full of anxiety, full of fear. There was no evil, no misfortune which the good were
not dreading and the bad looking out for. Every sort of seditious design against the existing
constitution of the republic, and against your tranquillity, was said to be in
contemplation,—some such to have been actually set on foot the moment we were
elected consuls. All confidence was banished from the forum, not by the stroke of any new
calamity, but by the general suspicion entertained of the courts of justice, and by the
disorder into which they had fallen, and by the constant reversal of previous decisions. New
authority, extraordinary powers, suited not to commanders, but to kings, were supposed to be
aimed at.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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