[126]
But that tribune
of the people, who was accustomed to put questions to the assembly, not
according to the usual custom of his father, or his grandfather, or his
great grandfather, or of any of his ancestors, but like a Greek
schoolmaster, “Did they wish me to return?” and when an
outcry was raised against it by the faint voices of his hirelings, he said
that the Roman people affirmed that they had no such wish,—he,
though he used to go and see the gladiators every day, was never seen when
he did come. He used to emerge on a sudden after he had crept along under
the benches, so that he seemed as if he were going to say,
“Mother, I call you.”1 And so that dark way by which he used to come to see
the games was called the Appian Road. But still, the moment the people got
sight of him, not only the gladiators, but the very horses of the
gladiators, were frightened at the sudden hisses that ensued.
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1 These words, quoted also by Horace, are from Pacuvius's play of Ilione, the mother of Polydorus, and are put into the mouth of the shade of the murdered Polydorus.
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.
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