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THE SIXTH ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST MARCUS ANTONIUS. CALLED ALSO THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE.
[3]
As therefore, O Caius Pansa, you have done well in other respects, so you have
acted admirably in exhorting us this day to pay honor to Servius Sulpicius, and
in yourself making an eloquent oration in his praise. And after the speech which
we have heard from you, I should have been content to say nothing beyond barely
giving my vote, if I did not think it necessary to reply to Publius Servilius,
who has declared his opinion that this honor of a statue ought to be granted to
no one who has not been actually slain with a sword while performing the duties
of his embassy. But I, O conscript fathers, consider that this was the feeling
of our ancestors, that they considered that it was the cause of death, and not
the manner of it, which was a proper subject for inquiry. In fact, they thought
fit that a monument should be erected to any man whose death was caused by an
embassy, in order to tempt men in perilous wars to be the more bold in
undertaking the office of an ambassador. What we ought to do, therefore, is, not
to scrutinize the precedents afforded by our ancestors, but to explain their
intentions from which the precedents themselves arose.
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