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20But as for you, Cicero, what did you accomplish in your consulship, I will not say that was wise and good, but that was not deserving of the greatest punishment? Did you not throw our city into confusion and party strife when it was quiet and harmonious, and fill the Forum and the Capitol with slaves, among others, whom you had summoned to help you? 2Did you not basely destroy Catiline, who had merely canvassed for office but had otherwise done nothing dreadful? Did you not pitilessly slay Lentulus and his followers, who were not only guilty of no wrong, but had neither been tried nor convicted, and that, too, though you are always and everywhere prating much about the laws and about the courts? Indeed, if one should take these phrases from your speeches, there is nothing left. 3You censured Pompey because he conducted the trial of Milo contrary to the established procedure; yet you yourself afforded Lentulus no privilege great or small that is prescribed in such cases, but without defence or trial you cast into prison a man respectable and aged, who could furnish in his ancestors abundant and weighty guarantees of his devotion to his country, and by reason of his age and his character had no power to incite a revolution. 4What evil was his that he could have cured by the change in the government? And what blessing did he not enjoy that he would certainly have jeopardized by beginning a rebellion? What arms had he collected, what allies had he equipped, that a man who had been consul and was then praetor should be so pitilessly and impiously cast into prison without being allowed to say a word in defence or to hear a single charge, and should there be put to death as are the basest criminals? 5For this is what our excellent Tullius here particularly desired, namely, that in the place that bears his name, he might put to death the grandson of that Lentulus who once had been the leader of the senate.
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