[28]
But still your colleague did do something. He upheld
the austerity of a most admirable man. He was himself a wicked man; he was a
mere ruffian and gladiator himself; but still he was fighting against one
who was as wicked and as much a gladiator and ruffian as himself. You,
forsooth, religious and conscientious man that you were, were reluctant to
violate the treaty which you had ratified in my blood concerning the bargain
made about the provinces. For that fellow, the adulterer with his own
sister, had made this bargain for himself, that if he gave you a province,
if he gave you an army, if he gave you money torn from the very life-blood
of the republic, you were to give yourself up to him as his partner and
assistant in all his crimes. Therefore, in that tumult the fasces were broken; you yourself were wounded; every
day there were weapons, stonings, and banishments. At last a man was
arrested close to the senate, armed with a sword, who it was notorious had
been placed there for the purpose of assassinating Pompeius.
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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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