ill propose! Ay! hound your lictors, sir consul, after us, to lay
their rods across our backs! Ay! enforce your decree proclaiming
martial law! So have you acted before to give legal fiction to your
tyranny! But tell me this, senators, praetorii, consulars, and consuls,
where will this mad violence of yours find end? Tiberius Gracchus you
have murdered. Caius Gracchus you have murdered. Marcus Drusus you
have murdered. Ten thousand good men has your creature Sulla murdered.
Without trial, without defence, were the friends of Catilina murdered.
And now will ye add one more deed of blood to those going before? Will
ye strike down an inviolate tribune, in Rome,--in the shadow of the
very Curia? Ah! days of the Decemvirs, when an evil Ten ruled over the
state--would that those days might return! Not ten tyrants but a
thousand oppress us now! Then despotism wore no cloak of patriotism or
legal right, but walked unmasked in all its blackness!

"Hearken, ye senators, and in the evil days to come, remember all I
say. Out of the seed which ye sow this hour come wars, civil wars;
Roman against Roman, kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother!
There comes impiety, violence, cruelty, bloodshed, anarchy! There
comes the destruction of the old; there comes the birth, amid pain and
anguish, of the new! Ye who grasp at money, at power, at high office;
who trample on truth and right to serve your selfish ends; false,
degenerate Romans,--one thing can wipe away your crimes--"

"What?" shouted Cato, across the senate-house; while Pompeius, who was
shifting uncomfortably in his seat, had turned very red.

"Blood!" cried back Antonius, carried away by the frenzy of his own
invective; then, shooting a lightning glance over the awe-struck
Senate, he spoke as though gifted with some terrible prophetic
omniscience. "Pompeius Magnus, the day of your prosperity is
past--prepare ingloriously to die! Lentulus Crus, you, too, shall pay
the forfeit of your crimes! Metellus Scipio, Marcus Cato, Lucius
Domitius, within five years shall you all be dead--dead and with
infamy upon your names! Your blood, your blood shall wipe away your
folly and your lust for power. Ye stay, we go. Ye stay to pass once
more unvetoed the decree declaring Caesar and his friends enemies of
the Republic; we go--go to endure our outlaw state. But we go to
appeal from the unjust scales of your false Justice to the juster
sword of an impartial Mars, and may the Furies t