[72]
But the same chance has polluted the
man, who was quite ignorant of what he was professing when he called himself
a philosopher, with the mud and filth of that fellow's most obscene and
intemperate flock.
And when he had praised the achievements of my consulship, (and I feel that
the panegyric of that basest of men was almost a discredit to me myself,)
“it was not,” says he, “any odium that you
incurred by your conduct then, which injured you, but your
verses.” It was too great a punishment that was established, I
trust, by you when you were consul, for a poet, whether he
were a bad one, or too free an one. For you wrote—“
Arms to the gown must yield.
” What then?—“This was what excited all that storm against you.” But I imagine that never was written in that panegyric, which, while you were consul was engraved on the sepulchre of the republic—“May it please you, that because Marcus Cicero has written a verse,...” but because he punished the guilty.
” What then?—“This was what excited all that storm against you.” But I imagine that never was written in that panegyric, which, while you were consul was engraved on the sepulchre of the republic—“May it please you, that because Marcus Cicero has written a verse,...” but because he punished the guilty.
