M. Tullius Cicero, On his House
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[110] And what goddess is she whom you have established there? She ought indeed to be the good goddess; since she has been consecrated by you. “She is Liberty,” says he. Have you then established her in my house whom you have driven out of the whole city? Did you, after you had denied that your colleagues,—men invested with the highest power,—were free; after you had closed all access to the temple of Castor against every one; after you had ordered in the hearing of the Roman people, this most illustrious man, of a most noble family, who has received the greatest honours from the Roman people, a priest, and a man of consular rank, a citizen of singular gentleness and modesty of character, (a man of whom I cannot sufficiently wonder how you can dare to look him in the face,) to be kicked and trampled on by your attendants; after you had driven him out of the city without being condemned, having proposed a most tyrannical privilegium against him; after you had confined the first man in the whole earth to his house; after you had occupied the forum with armed bands of profligate men;—did you then place the image of Liberty in that house, which was of itself a proof of your most cruel tyranny and of the miserable slavery of the Roman people? Was he the man whom Liberty ought, of all men in the world, to have driven from his house, whose existence was the only thing that prevented the whole city from coming under the power of slaves?