Philippics, 13.31

Cicero  translated by C. D. Yonge

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31“You have sent Capius into Syria.”

Do you not see then, O Antonius, that the whole world is open to our party, but that you have no spot, out of your own fortifications, where you can set your foot?

“You have allowed Casca to discharge the office of tribune.”

What then? Were we to remove a man, as if he had been Marullus, or Cæsetius, to whom we own it, that this and many other things like this can never happen for the future?

“You have taken away from the Luperci the revenues which Julius Cæsar assigned to them.”

Does he dare to make mention of the Luperci? Does he not shudder at the recollection of that day on which, smelling of wine, reeking with perfumes, and naked, he dared to exhort the indignant Roman people to embrace slavery?

“You, by a resolution of the senate, have removed the colonies of the veterans which had been legally settled.”

Have we removed them, or have we rather ratified a law which was passed in the comitia centuriata? See, rather, whether it is not you who have ruined these veterans, (those at least who are ruined,) and settled them in a place from which they themselves now feel that they shall never be able to make their escape.

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