[9]
Therefore, when you had laid this foundation of your
consulship, three days after, while you were looking on in silence, the
Aelian and Fufian law, that bulwark and wall of tranquillity and peace, was
overturned by Publius Clodius, that fatal prodigy and monster of the
republic. Not only the guilds which the senate had abolished were restored
but countless new ones were established of all the dregs of the city and
even of slaves. The same man, immersed in unheard of and impious
debaucheries, abolished that old preceptress of modesty and charity, the
severity of the censor, while you in the mean time, you sepulchre of the
republic, you who say that you were at that time consul at Rome, never by one single word intimated
any opinion of your own amid such a terrible shipwreck of the state.
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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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