This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[109]
But he, as having no need of a senate, did not miss any of
us, and rather rejoiced at our departure, and immediately proceeded to those
marvelous exploits of his. He who had defended the memoranda of Caesar for the
sake of his own profit, overturned the laws of Caesar—and good laws
too—for the sake of being able to agitate the republic. He increased
the number of years that magistrates were to enjoy their provinces; moreover,
though he was bound to be the defender of the acts of Caesar, he rescinded them
both with reference to public and private transactions.
In public transactions nothing is more authoritative than law; in private affairs
the most valid of all deeds is a will. Of the laws, some he abolished without
giving the least notice; others he gave notice of bills to abolish. Wills he
annulled; though they have been at all times held sacred even in the case of the
very meanest of the citizens. As for the statues and pictures which Caesar
bequeathed to the people, together with his gardens, those he carried away, some
to the house which belonged to Pompeius, and some to Scipio's villa.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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.