This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
[37]
You have thrown in my teeth the camp of Pompeius and all my conduct at that time.
At which time, indeed, if, as I have said before, my counsels and my authority
had prevailed, you would this day be in indigence, we should be free and the
republic would not have lost so many generals and so many armies. For I confess
that, when I saw that these things certainly would happen, which now have
happened, I was as greatly grieved as all the other virtuous citizens would have
been if they had foreseen the same things. I did grieve, I did grieve, O
conscript fathers, that the republic which had once been saved by your counsels
and mine, was fated to perish in a short time. Nor was I so inexperienced in and
ignorant of this nature of things, as to be disheartened on account of a
fondness for life, which while it endured would wear me out with anguish, and
when brought to an end would release me from all trouble. But I was desirous
that those most illustrious men, the lights of the republic, should live: so
many men of consular rank, so many men of praetorian rank, so many most
honorable senators; and besides them all the flower of our nobility and of our
youth; and the armies of excellent citizens. And if they were still alive, under
ever such hard conditions of peace (for any sort of peace with our
fellow-citizens appeared to me more desirable than civil war), we should be
still this day enjoying the republic.
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.