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.
[5]
But I availed myself of your friendly assistance. Of what assistance? Although
the instance which you cite I have myself at all times openly admitted. I
preferred confessing that I was under obligations to you, to letting myself
appear to any foolish person not sufficiently grateful. However, what was the
kindness that you did me? not killing me at Brundusium? Would you then have slain the man whom the
conqueror himself who conferred on you, as you used to boast, the chief rank
among all his robbers, had desired to be safe, and had enjoined to go to
Italy? Grant that you could have
slain him, is not this, O conscript fathers, such a kindness as is done by
banditti, who are contented with being able to boast that they have granted
their lives to all those men whose lives they have not taken? and if that were
really a kindness, then those who slew that man by whom they themselves had been
saved, and whom you yourself are in the habit of styling most illustrious men,
would never have acquired such immortal glory. But what sort of kindness is it,
to have abstained from committing nefarious wickedness? It is a case in which it
ought not to appear so delightful to me not to have been killed by you, as
miserable, that it should have been in your power to do such a thing with
impunity.
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.