[63]
This
violence, O priests, this wickedness, this frenzy, I, opposing my single
person to the storm, warded off from the necks of all good men, and I
received on my body all the attacks of disaffection, all the long-collected
violence of the wicked, which, having been long coming to a head, with
silent and repressed hatred, was at last breaking out now that it had got
such audacious leaders. Against me alone were directed the consular
firebrands hurled from the hands of the tribunes; all the impious arrows of
the conspiracy, which I had once before blunted, now stuck in me. But if, as
was the advice of many most gallant men, I had determined to contend with
violence and arms against violence, I should either have gained the day with
a great slaughter of wicked men, who notwithstanding were citizens, or else
all the good men would have been slain, to the great joy of the wicked, and
I too should have perished together with the republic.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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.