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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
[67]
What Charybdis was ever so voracious?
Charybdis, do I say? Charybdis, if she existed at all, was only one animal. The
ocean I swear most solemnly, appears scarcely capable of having swallowed up
such numbers of things so widely scattered and distributed in such different
places with such rapidity. No thing was shut up, nothing sealed up, no list was
made of any thing. Whole storehouses were abandoned to the most worthless of men
Actors seized on this, actresses on that; the house was crowded with gamblers,
and full of drunken men; people were drinking all day, and that too in many
places; there were added to all this expense (for this fellow was not invariably
fortunate) heavy gambling losses. You might see in the cellars of the slaves,
couches covered with the most richly embroidered counterpanes of Cnaeus
Pompeius. Wonder not, then, that all these things were so soon consumed. Such
profligacy as that could have devoured not only the patrimony of one individual,
however ample it might have been (as indeed his was), but whole cities and
kingdoms. And then his houses and gardens!
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