Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 36
[25] But all that is ancient history. Turning to the more recent past, you said that I instigated the killing of Caesar. On this I am afraid, conscript fathers, that you may think me guilty of the shocking offence of having arranged for a sham prosecutor to bring a charge against me—someone who would not only laud me with praises that rightfully belong to me but also load me with ones that properly belong to others. For who ever heard my name mentioned as one of the partners who carried out that glorious deed?* And of those partners, whose name has been kept secret? Kept secret, do I say? Whose name was not immediately broadcast? I would sooner venture that there were some who had not been in the plot, but whose boasts gave the impression that they had been, than that anyone had been in the plot and was anxious to conceal his involvement. [26] Moreover, how likely is it that among so many people, some of whom were virtually unknown and some mere youths—not the sort of people one could shelter behind—a name such as mine could have gone unnoticed?
Besides, if those who acted to liberate their country needed others to activate them, would I really be needed to urge on the Bruti, both of whom saw the mask of Lucius Brutus every day, and one of whom also that of Ahala?* Would these men, with these ancestors, really look to outsiders for guidance instead of to their own families, would they look far afield instead of to their own houses? And what about Gaius Cassius?* Born into a family which could not endure anyone’s influence, let alone their tyranny, he really must have needed me, I suppose, to show him the way! Even without his illustrious companions, he would have finished the job off in Cilicia,* at the mouth of the river Cnydus, if Caesar had only moored his boat on the bank on which he had originally planned, and not on the opposite one. [27] Was Gnaeus Domitius* inspired to regain his freedom not by the killing of his illustrious father, nor by the death of his uncle, nor by the deprivation of his public career—but by my prompting? Or did I persuade Gaius Trebonius?* I should not have dared even to advise him. The country therefore owes him an even greater debt of gratitude in that he put the freedom of the whole Roman people before his friendship with an individual, and preferred to overthrow a tyranny than to participate in it. Or did Lucius Tillius Cimber* follow my prompting? I was much more astonished that he did that deed than hopeful that he might—astonished because he forgot the favours he had received, but remembered his country. And what about the two Servilii—Cascas should I call them, or Ahalas?* Do you think they were inspired by my prompting rather than by their own patriotism? It would take too long to go through all the rest: their sheer number is a blessing for the state, and a glory for themselves.
[28] But remember how my intelligent adversary proved his point against me. ‘As soon as Caesar had been killed,’ he said, ‘Marcus Brutus, raising aloft his bloodstained dagger, called out to Cicero by name, and congratulated him on the recovery of freedom.’ But why me in particular? Because I was in the plot? Don’t you think the reason he called out my name was this—that since he had just done a deed comparable with what I myself had done,* he called on me to witness the fact that his glory now rivalled my own?
[29] And do you not understand, you utter moron, that if it were a crime to have wished Caesar dead, which is what you accuse me of, then it must also be a crime to have rejoiced once Caesar was dead? For what difference is there between someone who urges an action before it is done and someone who applauds it afterwards? What does it matter whether I wanted it done or was pleased that it had been done? Well then, is there anyone—besides those who were glad that he had turned into a king—who did not want this deed to happen, or failed to approve of it afterwards? So all are guilty. All loyal citizens, so far as was in their power, killed Caesar. Not everyone had a plan, not everyone had the courage, not everyone had the opportunity—but everyone had the will.
[30] But consider the doziness of this man—this sheep, rather. These were his words: ‘Marcus Brutus, whose name I mention with respect, called out to Cicero as he held the bloodstained dagger—which should make it clear that Cicero was in the plot.’ So you call me a criminal because you have a suspicion that I suspected something, whereas the man who held up his dagger dripping with blood ‘is mentioned with respect’. All right, then. We’ll put up with this doziness in your words—since that in your actions and opinions is so much greater! Determine at long last, consul, the position you want to apply to the Bruti, Gaius Cassius, Gnaeus Domitius, Gaius Trebonius, and the rest. Sleep off your drunkenness, I tell you; belch it out! Or must we bring flaming torches to wake you up, asleep on an issue as important as this? Are you ever going to understand that you have got to make up your mind whether the men who carried out that deed are murderers or champions of freedom?
[31] Pay attention for a moment. Try to think like a man who is sober, just for a second. I am their friend, as I freely admit, their partner, as you accuse me of being; and I tell you that there is no middle way. If they are not liberators of the Roman people and saviours of the state, then I admit that they are worse than cutthroats, worse than murderers, worse even than parricides—if it is indeed a more wicked crime to kill the parent of one’s country* than one’s own parent. What do you say then, you man of wisdom and judgement? If you consider them parricides, why have you always mentioned them with respect, both here in the senate and before the Roman people? Why was Marcus Brutus on your proposal granted exemption from the laws in the event of his being absent from Rome for more than ten days?* Why was such astonishing honour shown to Marcus Brutus when the Apollinarian Games* were held? Why were provinces given to Brutus and Cassius, why were quaestors assigned, why was the number of legates increased?* And all this was done through you. Not murderers, therefore. It follows that they must, on your reckoning, be liberators, since there is no third possibility. [32] What is the matter? Surely I am not confusing you? Perhaps you cannot fully grasp a disjunctive argument. However that may be, this is what my conclusion amounts to: since you have freed them of guilt, you have also judged them to be deserving of the highest rewards.
I therefore now retract what I said. I shall write to them and tell them that if anyone should happen to ask them whether what you accuse me of is true, they are not to deny it. I am afraid, you see, that either their having kept me in ignorance of the plot will reflect discreditably on them, or else my having been invited but refused to join it will reflect utterly disgracefully on me. Holy Jupiter, has there ever been any action, not just in this city but in the whole world, more significant, more glorious, or more worthy to be remembered for all time? And do you* include me as a partner in that enterprise, together with its leaders, as in a Trojan horse? [33] I do not decline. I even thank you—whatever your intention was. It was an enterprise so heroic that I prefer the unpopularity which you seek to stir up against me to any praise. After all, does anyone enjoy a happier fate than those whom you declare you have driven out and exiled? What land is so deserted or so inhospitable as not to seem to greet them with welcoming words on their arrival? What people are so savage as not to think, when they catch sight of them, that they have reaped the greatest harvest that life can offer? What future generation will be so forgetful, what history books so ungrateful as not to celebrate their glory with everlasting remembrance? By all means, then, enrol me in their number!
[34] But I am afraid that there is one thing of which you may not approve: if I had indeed been in their number, I should have removed not just the king, but kingship itself from the state. And if that pen* had been mine, as is claimed, then believe me, I should have finished off not just one act, but the entire play.
And yet, if it is a crime to have wished Caesar dead, then please consider, Antonius, what ought to happen to you. For everyone knows that you and Gaius Trebonius plotted to kill him at Narbo;* and your involvement in that plot is the reason why Trebonius, as we saw, drew you to one side while Caesar was being killed. For my own part (and note the generosity with which I deal with you), I praise you for the noble intentions you once had; I thank you for not turnin
g informer; and I forgive you for not acting. After all, the task called for a real man.
[35] But if anyone takes you to court and applies Cassius’ famous test, ‘Who stood to gain?’,* then please take care you are not caught. It is true, as you yourself used to point out, that everyone who did not want to be a slave profited from Caesar’s death; but you gained more than anyone, because now not only are you not a slave, you are a king. You freed yourself of your colossal debts at the temple of Ops.* You made use of the account books held there to squander an unimaginable sum of money. You had a large part of the contents of Caesar’s house transferred to yours.* And you have a highly profitable factory set up at your own house to produce forged notebooks and memoranda*—a scandalous market of estates, towns, exemptions, and revenues. [36] What, except Caesar’s death, could possibly have rescued you from your poverty and debts? You seem a little put out. Surely you are not worried that this charge may be seen as relating in some way to you? Let me free you from your fear: no one will ever believe you were involved. Serving your country well is not what you do; and our country already has illustrious men who performed that noble act. All I claim is that you were pleased it happened: I am not maintaining that you were responsible.
I have replied to the most serious charges. Now I must answer those that are left.
[37] You have brought up Pompeius’ camp against me, and that whole period.* If at that time, as I have already said,* my advice and authority had prevailed, you today would be poor, we would be free, and the country would not have lost all those leaders and armies. I foresaw exactly what was going to happen; and I admit that it made me as unhappy as it would certainly have made all the other patriots had they foreseen it too. I was stricken with grief—stricken with grief, conscript fathers—when I reflected that our country, once saved by your efforts and mine,* would very soon be destroyed. I was not so unphilosophical or ignorant of the world as to feel crushed from a desire to cling onto life—a life which, as long as it continued, was likely only to consume me with anguish, but which, once ended, would free me from all my unhappiness. No, what upset me was that I wanted all those brilliant luminaries of our nation to stay alive—all those consulars, all those praetorians, all those honourable senators, all the flower of our young nobility, and those armies of patriotic citizens. If they had only stayed alive, however harsh the terms of peace (and I thought any kind of peace with fellow-citizens preferable to civil war), our country would still exist today. [38] If my opinion had prevailed, and if those people whose lives I was anxious to preserve had not, in their excitement at the prospect of victory, taken the lead in opposing me, then (to say nothing of any other consequences) you would certainly never have kept your place in this order—or in this city.
You say I forfeited Pompeius’ goodwill because of the things I said. But was there anyone he was more fond of? Anyone he was more ready to talk to and discuss his plans with? This was indeed ‘great’,* that we could disagree in politics and yet remain friends. Each of us saw the other’s point of view and understood his outlook. My primary concern was for the lives of our citizens; we could think about principle later. He on the other hand put principle first. Each of us knew what he wanted to pursue, and that made our difference of opinion more tolerable. [39] What that brilliant and almost superhuman man thought of me is known to those who accompanied him from Pharsalus to Paphos.* He never mentioned my name except in the most honourable terms, terms full of friendly feeling and regret that I was not with him; and he admitted that while he had had the higher hopes, I had had the greater foresight. So do you have the impertinence to attack me in that man’s name, while at the same time conceding that whereas I was his friend, you are the purchaser of his property?*
But let us pass over that war, in which you did better than you deserved. I shall not even comment on the joking you claimed I indulged in in the camp. That camp was in a state of anxiety; but human beings, even in times of crisis, do sometimes unwind, if they are human at all. [40] However, the fact that I am criticized for my gloom one moment and for my light-heartedness the next is a sure sign that I showed restraint in both.
You said that I never receive any inheritances. Would the charge were true! Then more of my friends and connections would still be alive. But what put it into your head to bring this up? After all, my accounts do in fact show that I have received more than twenty million sesterces in inheritances. But I concede that in this area you have been luckier than I. Me nobody made his heir unless he was a friend of mine; so that along with the material benefit, if there was any, there also came a degree of sadness. You, on the other hand, were the heir of Lucius Rubrius of Casinum,* a man you never once set eyes on. [41] And observe how fond of you he was, this man who could have been black or white as far as you knew. He passed over the son of his brother Quintus Fufius,* an honourable Roman equestrian with whom he was on the best of terms, and the son whom he had publicly proclaimed as his heir he did not even name in his will. You, on the other hand, whom he had never seen, or at least never spoken to, he made his heir. Please tell me, if it is not too much trouble, what Lucius Turselius* looked like, how tall he was, which town he came from, and which tribe. ‘I have no idea,’ you will say, ‘I only know what farms he owned.’ So that is why he disinherited his brother and made you his heir instead! Furthermore, Antonius seized many other private fortunes, the property of people he had nothing to do with, posing as their heir and using force to drive away the real heirs. [42] And yet the thing that surprised me most was that you dared to bring up the subject of inheritances in the first place, after you yourself had declined to accept that of your father.*
Was it to formulate arguments such as these, you utter lunatic, that you spent day after day declaiming in a country house that rightfully belongs to someone else?* Though, as your closest friends are always saying, the reason you declaim is to help you belch up your wine, not to sharpen your intelligence. But you retain, for your own amusement, a master elected by yourself and your fellow-drinkers, a rhetorician* whom you have given leave to say what he likes against you, a witty fellow by all accounts—but of course the task of finding suitable subject matter with which to attack you and your friends is hardly a difficult one. Observe what a difference there is between you and your grandfather:* he weighed his words and said what would benefit his case; you gabble irrelevances. [43] But what a fee your rhetorician received! Listen, listen, conscript fathers, and learn what wounds our country has sustained! You assigned two thousand iugera* of the plain of Leontini to the rhetorician Sextus Clodius, and tax-free as well: that is the enormous price the Roman people had to pay so that you could learn to be a fool. Surely, you criminal, you did not find this gift, also, in Caesar’s notebooks? But I shall be talking later* about the land at Leontini and in Campania, land which Antonius stole from the state and profaned with the most scandalous occupants.
I have now said as much as I need to in reply to his charges. But I still ought to say something about my censorious critic himself. I am not going to pour forth everything that could be said on the subject: after all, if we cross swords often, as we are bound to, I will always need to have fresh material. But even so, the sheer number of his crimes and misdemeanours affords me ample scope.
[44] Would you like us, then, to look at your record from your childhood onwards? Yes, I think so: let’s start at the beginning. Do you remember how when you were still a child you went bankrupt?* ‘That was my father’s fault,’ you will say. I grant it: your defence is a model of filial duty! But what reflects your own effrontery is that you sat in the fourteen rows, when under the Roscian law* there was a specific place set aside for bankrupts—regardless of whether their bankruptcy was their own fault or the result of bad luck.
Then you assumed the toga of manhood—and immediately turned it into a toga of womanhood.* First you were a common prostitute: you had a fixed rate for your shameful services, and not a low one either. But soon Curio* appeared on the scene. He s
aved you from having to support yourself as a prostitute, fitted you out in the dress of a married lady, as it were, and settled you in good, steady wedlock. [45] No slave boy bought for sexual gratification was ever as much in his master’s power as you were in Curio’s. How many times did his father* throw you out of his house! How many times did he post guards to stop you crossing his threshold! But you, with night to aid you, lust to drive you, and the prospect of payment to compel you, had yourself lowered in through the roof-tiles. Such disgrace that house could endure no longer. Are you aware that I am speaking about things of which I am exceptionally well informed? Cast your mind back to the time when the elder Curio was confined to bed by his grief. The son threw himself in tears at my feet and asked me to help you out. He begged me to protect him from his father’s anger if he asked him for six million sesterces—that being the sum for which he said he had stood surety for you. As for himself, in the ardour of his passion he declared that he could not endure the pain of being separated from you, and would therefore take himself off into exile. [46] How deep were the troubles of a flourishing family which I at that time laid to rest, or rather removed altogether! I persuaded the father to pay off his son’s debts;* to use the family’s capital to redeem a young man of such promising character and abilities;* and to assert his rights and powers as the head of the family to prevent his son not only from being a friend of yours, but even from seeing you. When you remembered that I was responsible for all of this, would you have dared to provoke me with your insults if you did not rely on the protection of those swords which we now see in front of us?