[19]
I ask you this, also, whether you endeavoured, whether you
wished, whether, in short, you intended, (for these all amount to the same
thing, so that if it ever only occurred to your mind, there is no one who
would not think you worthy of the greatest severity of
punishment,)—I ask you, I say, whether you ever intended in the
course of that intolerable (I will not say reign of yours, for that is a
word which you would like me to use, but) piratical power, to be made augur
in the room of Quintus Metellus? so that whoever beheld you might feel a
twofold grief and misery, both from his regret for a most illustrious and
most gallant citizen, and from the honour of a most worthless and infamous
one. I ask you, did you think, I will not say, that the republic had been so
undermined while you were tribune, or that the constitution had been so much
battered and shaken, but that this city had been so entirely stormed and
overthrown, that we could endure Vatinius for an augur?
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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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