the subject as any
modern historian, this composition eventually cost the orator his life. It
is not difficult to understand the bitter vindictiveness of Antony. Cicero
had been not merely a political opponent; he had attacked his private
character (which presented abundant grounds for such attack) with all
the venom of his eloquence. He had said, indeed, in the first of these
powerful orations, that he had never taken this line.

"If I have abused his private life and character, I have no right to
complain if he is my enemy: but if I have only followed my usual custom,
which I have ever maintained in public life,--I mean, if I have only
spoken my opinion on public questions freely,--then, in the first place, I
protest against his being angry with me at all: or, if this be too much
to expect, I demand that he should be angry with me only as with a
fellow-citizen".

If there had been any sort of reticence on this point hitherto on the part
of Cicero, he made up for it in this second speech. Nothing can equal its
bitter personality, except perhaps its rhetorical power. He begins the
attack by declaring that he will not tell all he knows--"in order that, if
we have to do battle again hereafter, I may come always fresh-armed to the
attack; an advantage which the multiplicity of that man's crimes and vices
gives me in large measure". Then he proceeds:

"Would you like us, then, to examine into your course of life from
boyhood? I conclude you would. Do you remember that before you put on the
robe of manhood, you were a bankrupt? That was my father's fault, you will
say. I grant it--it is a defence that speaks volumes for your feelings as
a son. It was your own shamelessness, however, that made you take your
seat in the stalls of honourable knights, whereas by law there is a fixed
place for bankrupts, even when they have become so by fortune's fault, and
not their own. You put on the robe which was to mark your manhood,--on
your person it became the flaunting gear of a harlot".

It is not desirable to follow the orator through some of his accusations;
when he had to lash a man whom he held to be a criminal, he did not much
care where or how he struck. He even breaks off himself--after saying a
good deal.

"There are some things, which even a decent enemy hesitates to speak
of.... Mark, then, his subsequent course of life, which I will trace as
rapidly as I can. For though these things are better known to you than
even to