obbers, assassins were stationed in the temple of Concord;
the temple was turned into a prison; the doors of the temple were
closed, and the conscript fathers delivered their opinions while
robbers were standing among the benches of the senators. And if I
did not come to a senate-house in this state, he, on the first of
September, said that he would send carpenters and pull down my house.
It was an important affair, I suppose, that was to be discussed. He
made some motion about a supplication. I attended the day after. He
himself did not come. I delivered my opinion about the republic, not
indeed with quite so much freedom as usual, but still with more than
the threats of personal danger to myself made perhaps advisable. But
that violent and furious man (for Lucius Piso had done the same thing
with great credit thirty days before) threatened me with his enmity,
and ordered me to attend the senate on the nineteenth of September. In
the meantime he spent the whole of the intervening seventeen days in
the villa of Scipio, at Tibur, declaiming against me to make himself
thirsty. For this is his usual object in declaiming. When the day
arrived on which he had ordered me to attend, then he came with a
regular army in battle array to the temple of Concord, and out of his
impure mouth vomited forth an oration against me in my absence. On
which day, if my friends had not prevented me from attending the
senate as I was anxious to do, he would have begun a massacre by the
slaughter of me. For that was what he had resolved to do. And when
once he had dyed his sword in blood, nothing would have made him
leave off but pure fatigue and satiety. In truth, his brother, Lucius
Antonius, was present, an Asiatic gladiator, who had fought as a
Mirmillo,[34] at Mylasa; he was thirsting for my blood, and had shed
much of his own in that gladiatorial combat. He was now valuing our
property in his mind, taking notice of our possessions in the city
and in the country; his indigence united with his covetousness was
threatening all our fortunes; he was distributing our lands to
whomsoever and in whatever shares he pleased; no private individual
could get access to him, or find any means to propitiate him, and
induce him to act with justice. Every former proprietor had just so
much property as Antonius left him after the division of his estate.
And although all these proceedings cannot be ratified, if you annul
his laws, still I think that they ough