[56]
But you have heard, O conscript fathers, the voice of the philosopher. He has
said that he never had any desire for a triumph. O you wickedness! you pest!
you disgrace! when you were extinguishing the senate, and putting up for
sale the authority of this order—when you were knocking down your
own consulship to a tribune of the people, and overturning the republic, and
betraying my privileges as a citizen, and my safety, for the mere bribe of a
province,—if you then had no desire for a triumph, what is it that
you will allege in your defence that you did desire so ardently? For I have
often seen men, who appeared to me and to others to be over desirous of a
province, veil and excuse their desire under the pretence of eagerness for a
triumph. This is what Decimus Silanus the consul lately said before this
order,—this is what my colleague, too, stated. Nor is it possible
for any one to desire an army, and openly to demand one, without putting
forward as his pretext for such a demand his desire of a triumph.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.