[52]
But with respect to that charge, I will first of all
ask this—whether he told Clodia for what purpose he was then
taking the gold, or whether he did not tell her? If he did not tell her, why
was it that she gave it? If he did tell her, then she has implicated herself
as an accomplice in the same wickedness. Did you dare to take gold out of
your strong-box? Did you dare to strip that statue of yours of Venus the
Plunderer of men of her ornaments? But when you knew for what an enormous
crime this gold was required,—for the murder of an
ambassador,—for the staining of Lucius Lucceius, a most pious and
upright man, with the blot of everlasting impiety—then your
well-educated mind ought not to have been privy to so horrible an atrocity;
your house, so open to all people, ought not to have been made an instrument
in it. Above all, that most hospitable Venus of yours ought not to have been
an assistant in it.
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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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