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[15]
When, as you know, during the last three or four days a report of bad news from
Mutina has been creeping abroad,
the disloyal part of the citizens, inflated with exultation and insolence, began
to collect in one place, at that senate-house which has been more fatal to their
party than to the republic. There, while they were forming a plan to massacre
us, and were distributing the different duties among one another, and settling
who was to seize on the Capitol, who on the rostra, who on the gates of the
city, they thought that all the citizens would flock to me. And in order to
bring me into unpopularity, and even into danger of my life, they spread abroad
this report about the fasces. They themselves had
some idea of bringing the fasces to my house; and
then, on pretense of that having been done by my wish, they had prepared a band
of hired ruffians to make an attack on me as on a tyrant, and a massacre of all
of you was intended to follow. The fact is already notorious, O conscript
fathers, but the origin of all this wickedness will be revealed in its fitting
time.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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