[19]
Was I, forsooth, anxious to lean on the counsel or
protection of that piece of senseless cattle, of that bit of rotten flesh?
was I likely to seek for any support or ornament for myself from that
contemptible carcass? I suppose I was looking for a consul, I say, but one
(that I was not likely to find in that hog) who might uphold the cause of
the republic with his dignity and wisdom, not one who like a stock or like a
trunk of a tree, if he only stood upright, might maintain the title of
consul. For as the whole of my cause was the cause of a consul and of the
senate, I had need of the assistance of the consul and senate;
one of which sources of aid was even turned by you when you were consuls to
my injury; the other was entirely suspended, if not abolished in the
republic.
But if you ask what were my intentions; I would not have yielded, and the
republic should still have retained me in its embrace, if I had only had to
contend with contemptible gladiators,1 and with you, and with
your colleague. For the cause of that most admirable man Quintus Metellus
was a wholly different one; a citizen whom, in my opinion, I consider equal
in glory to the immortal gods;
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1 The Latin is bustuarius; literally, one who fights at the funeral pile in honour of the dead.
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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