[31]
But I pass over the fact of its having been a banquet of the Roman people,
the day of festival, adorned with the exhibition of silver plate, and robes,
and all sorts of furniture and ornaments; I ask who ever in a time of
domestic mourning, who ever at a funeral of one of his own family, sat down
to supper in a black robe? who ever, except you, as he was leaving a bath,
had a black gown given to him? When so many thousand men were sitting at the
feast, when the master of the feast himself, Quintus Arrius, was in a white
robe, you introduced yourself into the temple of Castor, with Caius Fidulus
and the rest of your Furies, in black garments, like the assistants at a
funeral. Who was there who did not then receive you with groans? who was
there who did not lament over the fate of the republic? what other topic of
conversation was there at that banquet except this, that this city, so great
and so wise, was now exposed not only to your frenzy, but also to your
derision?
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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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