Imatges de pàgina
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matrons discovered, even in the most sacred recesses of the immortal gods: the man, by whose punishment the senate frequently determined to atone for the violation of our religious rites: the man whose incest with his own sister, Lucullus swore he had discovered by due examination: the man who, by the violence of his slaves; expelled a person esteemed by the senate, the people, and all nations, as the preserver of the city and the lives of the citizens: the man who gave and took away kingdoms, and parcelled out the world to whom he pleased :the man, who, after having committed several murders in the forum, by force of arms obliged a citizen of illus trious virtue and character to confine himself within the walls of his own house: the man who thought no in stance of villainy or lust unlawful: the man who fired the temple of the Nymphs, in order to destroy the public register, which contained the censure of his crimes; in a word, the man who governed himself by no law, dis regarded all civil institutions, and observed no bounds in the division of property; who never attempted to seize the estate of another by quirks of law, suborned evidence, or false oaths, but employed the more effectual means of regular troops, encampments, and standards; who, by his armed forces, endeavoured to drive from their possessions, not only the Tuscans, (for them he utterly despised,) but Q. Varius, one of our judges, that brave man and worthy citizen; who, with his architects and measures, traversed the cstates and gardens of a great many citizens, and grasped, in his own imagination, all that lies between Janiculum and the Alps; who, when he could not persuade Titus Pacavius, an illustrious and brave Roman knight, to sell an island upon the Pretian lake, immediately conveyed timber, stone, mortar, and sand, into the island in boats, and made no scruple of building a house on another person's estate, even while the proprietor was viewing him from the opposite bank; who had the impudence, immortal gods! to declare to such a man as Titus Furfanius, (for I shall omit the affair relating to the widow Scantia, and the young Apronius, both of whom he threatened with death, if they did not yield to him the possession of their gardens,) who had the impudence, I say, to declare to Titus Furfanius, that if he did not give him the sum of money he de

manded, he would convey a dead body into his house, in order to expose so eminent a man to the public odium; who dispossessed his brother Appius of his estate in his absence, a mau united to me in the closest friendship; who attempted to run a wall through a court-yard belonging to his sister, and to build it in such a manner as not only to render the court-yard useless, but to deprive her of all entrance and access to her house.

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Yet all these violences were tolerated, though committed no less against the commonwealth, than against private persons; against the remotest, as well as the nearest; strangers, as well as relations: but the amazing patience of Rome was become, I know not how, perfectly hardened and callous. Yet by what means could you have warded off those dangers that were more immediate and threatening, or how could you have submitted to his government, if he had obtained it? I pass by our allies, foreign nations, kings, and princes; for it was your ar. dent prayer that he would turn himself loose upon those, rather than upon your estates, your houses, and your money-Your money, did I say?-By heavens, he had never restrained his unbridled lust from violating your wives and children. Do you imagine that these things are mere fictions? Are they not evident? not publicly known? not remembered by all? Is it not notorious that he attempted to raise an army of slaves, strong enough to make himself master of the whole republic, and of the property of every Roman? Wherefore, if Milo, holding the bloody dagger in his hand, had cried aloud, Citizens, I beseech you, draw near and attend: I have killed Publius Clodius with this right hand, with this dagger: I have saved your lives from that fury, which no laws, no government could restrain: to me alone it is owing, that justice, equity, laws, liberty, modesty, and decency, have yet a being in Rome"could there be any room for Milo to fear how his coun try would take it? Who is there now that does not

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approve and applaud it? Where is the man that does not think and declare it as his opinion, that Milo has done the greatest possible service to his country; that he has spread joy amongst the inhabitants of Rome, of all Italy, and the whole world? I cannot indeed determine how high the transports of the Roman people

may have risen in former times: this present age, however, has been witness to many signal victories of the bravest generals; but none of them ever occasioned such real and lasting joy. Commit this, my lords, to your memories. I hope that you and your children will enjoy many blessings in the republic, and that each of them will be attended with this reflection, that if P. Clodius had lived, you would have enjoyed none of them. We now entertain the highest, and, I trust, the best-grounded hopes, that so excellent a person being consul, the licentiousness of men being curbed, their schemes broken, law and justice established, the present will be a most fortunate year to Rome. But who is so stupid as to imagine this would have been the case had Clodius lived? How could you possibly have been secure in the possession of what belongs to you, of your own private pro-. perty, under the tyranny of such a fury?

I am not afraid, my lords, that I should seem to let my resentment for personal injuries rise so high, as to charge these things upon him with more freedom than truth; for, though it might be expected this should be the principal motive, yet so common an enemy was he to all mankind, that my aversion to him was scarcely greater than that of the whole world. It is impossible to express, or indeed to imagine, what a villain, what a pernicious monster he was. But, my lords, attend to this; the present trial relates to the death of Clodius: form, now, in your minds-(for our thoughts are free, and represent what they please, just in the same manner as we perceive what we see)-form, I say, in your minds, the picture of what I shall now describe. Suppose I could persuade you to acquit Milo, on condition that Clodius should revive. Why do your countenances betray those marks of fear? How would he affect you

when living, if the bare imagination of him, though he is dead, so powerfully strikes you? What, if Pompey himself, a man possessed of that merit and fortune which enable him to effect what no one besides can; if he, I say, had it in his power either to appoint Clodius's death to be enquired into, or to raise him from the dead; which do you think he would choose? Though from a principle of friendship he might be inclined to raise him from the dead, yet a regard to his country would pre

vent him. You therefore sit as the avengers of that man's death, whom you would not recall to life if you were able; and enquiry is made into his death by a law which would not have passed if it could have brought him to life. If his destroyer then should confess the fact, need he fear to be punished by those whom he has delivered? The Greeks render divine honours to those who put tyrants to death. What have I seen at Athens! what in other cities of Greece! What ceremonies were instituted for such heroes! what hymns! what songs! The honours paid them were almost equal to those paid to the immortal gods. And will you not only refuse to pay any honours to the preserver of so great a people, and the avenger of such execrable villanies, but even suffer him to be dragged to punishment? He would have confessed, I say, had he done the action; he would have bravely and freely confessed that he did it for the common good and indeed he ought not only to have confessed, but to have proclaimed it.

XXVI. The oration of

schines against Demos thenes, on the crown.

In such a situation of affairs, and in such disorders, as you yourselves are sensible of, the only method of saving the wrecks of government, is, if I mistake not, to allow full liberty to accuse those who have invaded your laws. But if you shut them up, or suffer others to do this, I prophecy that you will fall insensibly, and that very soon, under a tyrannical power. For you know, Athenians, that government is divided into three kinds; monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. As to the two for mer, they are governed at the will and pleasure of those who reign in either; whereas established laws only, reign in a popular state. I make these observations, there fore, that none of you may be ignorant, but on the contrary, that every one may be entirely assured that the day he ascends the seat of justice, to examine an accusation upon the invasion of the laws, that very day he goes to give judgment upon his own independence. And, indeed, the legislature, who is convinced that a

free state can support itself no longer than the laws govern, takes particular care to prescribe this form of an oath to judges, "I will judge according to the laws." The remembrance, therefore, of this being deeply implanted in your minds, must inspire you with a just abhorrence of any persons whatsoever who dare trans gress them by. rash decrees; and that far from ever looking upon a transgression of this kind as a small fault, you always consider it as an enormous and capital crime. Do not suffer, then, any one to make you depart from so wise a principle-But as, in the army, every one of you would be ashamed to quit the post assigned him by the general; so let every one of you be this day ashamed to abandon the post which the laws have given you in the commonwealth. What post?-that of protectorsof the government.

Must we in your person crown the author of the pub. lic calamities, or must we destroy him? And, indeed, what unexpected revolutions, what unthought-of catas trophes have we not seen in our days?-The king of Persia, that king who opened a passage through Mount Athos; who bound the Hellespont in chains; who was so imperious as to command the Greeks to acknowledge him sovereign both of sea and land; who in his lettersand dispatches presumed to style himself the sovereign of the world from the rising to the setting of the sun; and who fights now, not to rule over the rest of man.. kind, but to save his own life. Do not we see those very men who signalized their zeal in the relief of Delphi, invested both with the glory, for which that powerfulking was once so conspicuous, and with the title of the chief of the Greeks against him? As to, Thebes, which borders upon Attica, have we not seen it disappear in one day from the midst of Greece?—And with regard to the unhappy Lacedæmonians, what calamities have not befallen them only for taking but a small part of the spoils of the temple? They who formerly assumed a superiority over Greece, are they not now going to send ambassadors to Alexander's court; to bear the name of hostages in his train; to become a spectacle of misery; to bow the knee before the monarch; submit themselves and their country to his mercy; and receive such laws as a conqueror, a conqueror they attacked first, shall

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