[53]
What other dissensions among the nobles can I suppose are pointed out by the
immortal gods? For by this expression Publius Clodius is surely not meant
nor any one of his gang or of his counselors. The Etruscan books have
certain names which may fit some of that class of citizens.
“Worthless men, rejected candidates,” as you shall
presently hear, they call them, whose minds and estates are ruined, and
utterly alienated from the general welfare. Wherefore when the immortal gods
warn us of the discords of the nobles, they speak of the dissensions between
illustrious citizens who have deserved well of the republic. When they
predict danger and slaughter to the chief men, they leave Clodius safe
enough, a man who is as far from the chief men as he is from virtuous or
holy men. It is for you and for your safety, O most illustrious and most
virtuous citizens, that they see that it behoves them to consult and to
provide.
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.