[102]
Oh that night, that night which nearly brought eternal darkness on this city, when the Gauls
were invited to war, when Catiline was invited into the city, when the conspirators were
invited to bring fire and sword upon us all; when I, O Flaccus, invoking heaven and night, was
with tears entreating your aid, and you in tears were listening to me; when I commended to
your honest and well-proved loyalty the safety of the city and of the citizens. You, O
Flaccus, being at that time praetor, took the messengers of the general destruction; it was
you who arrested that plague 1
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 He refers to the ambassadors of the Allobroges, and to the letters from Lentulus, etc., which were found in their possession. See the Arguments to the Catilinarian orations.1
2 of the republic which was contained in letters; you brought the proofs of our danger, you brought the aid that was to secure our safety to me and to the senate. What thanks were then given you by me! how did the senate, how did all good men thank you! Who would then have thought that any good man would ever refuse to Caius Pomptinus, that bravest of men, or to you, I will not say safety, but any imaginable honour? Oh those nones of December; what a time was that when I was consul! a day that I may fairly call the birthday of this city, or at all events its day of salvation.
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.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.