ony was saying at the
time, but on what the Roman people would order a man to say. How could
he have believed that this injunction had really been laid upon any one,
when he knew that the people had not voted anything of the kind and did
not hear them shouting out. But it was right for him to hear this in the
Roman Forum, where we had often joined in many deliberations for freedom,
and beside the rostra from which we had sent forth thousands and
thousands of measures in behalf of the democracy, and at the festival of
the Lupercalia, in order that he should remember Romulus, and from the
mouth of the consul that he might call to mind the deeds of the early
consuls, and in the name of the people, that he might ponder the fact
that he was undertaking to be tyrant not over Africans or Gauls or
Egyptians, but over very Romans. These words made him turn about; they
humiliated him. And whereas if any one else had offered him the diadem,
he might have taken it, he was then stopped short by that speech and felt
a shudder of alarm.

"These, then are the deeds of Antony: he did not uselessly break a leg,
in order himself to escape, nor burn off a hand, in order to frighten
Porsenna, but by his cleverness and consummate skill he put an end to
the tyranny of Caesar better than any spear of Decius and better than the
sword of Brutus. [-20-] But you, Cicero, what did you effect in your
consulship, not to mention wise and good things, that was not deserving
of the greatest punishment? Did you not throw our city into uproar and
party strife when it was quiet and harmonious, and fill the Forum and
Capitol with slaves, among others, that you had called to your aid? Did
you not ruin miserably Catiline, who was overanxious for office, but
otherwise guilty of no violence? Did you not pitiably destroy Lentulus
and his followers, who were not guilty, not tried, and not convicted, in
spite of the fact that you are always and everywhere prating interminably
about the laws and about the courts? If any one should take these phrases
from your speeches, there is nothing left. You censured Pompey because
he conducted the trial of Milo contrary to legalized precedent: yet you
afforded Lentulus no privilege great or small that is enjoined in these
cases, but without a speech or trial you cast him into prison, a man
respectable, aged, whose ancestors had given many great pledges that he
would be friendly to his country, and who by reason of his age and h