Searching for “=+Caesar -Cicero”

“This being the case, although a large measure of safety was afforded even by Caesar both to you and to me for the discussion of pressing questions, yet since you have further voted to assemble under guard, we must frame all our words and acts this day in such a fashion as to settle the present difficulties and to provide for the future, that we may not again be compelled to decide in a similar way about them.

assumed control of the legions which Caesar had sent ahead against the Parthians and keeps them about him, though no danger threatens Italy, and after leaving the city during the period of his consulship now goes about pillaging and ruining the country; for these reasons I declare that he has long been an enemy of us all.

For after you had abrogated of your own free will the positions of command assigned by Caesar or by the lot to each man, would you ever have allowed this fellow to distribute numerous appointments to his friends and companions, sending his brother Gaius to Macedonia, and assigning to himself Gaul together with the legions, which he had no occasion to use in your defence?

Do you not recall how, when he found you in consternation over Caesar’s death, he carried out all the schemes that he chose, communicating some to you carefully dissimulated and at inopportune moments, and executing others on his own responsibility, thus adding villainy to his deception, while all his acts were accomplished by violence? At least he employed soldiers, and barbarians, too, against you.

Consider a moment. Through my influence you voted that there should be peace and harmony amongst you. This man, when he was ordered to manage the business, performed it in such a way, taking Caesar’s funeral as a pretext, that almost the whole city was burned down and once more great numbers were slaughtered.

He has taken away lands and citizenship and exemption from taxes and many other honours from their possessors, whether private persons, kings, or cities, and has given them to men who did not receive them, by altering the memoranda of Caesar; from those who were unwilling to give up anything to his grasp he took away even what had been given them, and sold this and everything else to such as wished to buy.

“Has he, then, shown himself to be this sort of man only in these affairs, while managing the rest rightly? When or how? Though ordered to search out and produce the public moneys left behind by Caesar, has he not seized them, paying a part to his creditors and spending a part on high living, so that he no longer has any left even of this?

Though you hated the name of dictator on account of Caesar’s sovereignty and rejected it entirely from the state, has not Antony, even though he has avoided adopting it,—as if the name in itself could do any harm,—nevertheless exhibited a dictator’s behaviour and his greed for gain under the title of the consulship?

Though you assigned to him the duty of promoting harmony, has he not on his own responsibility begun this great war, neither necessary nor sanctioned, against Caesar and Decimus, whom you approve?

I shall let this pass, then, and likewise, by Jupiter, his visit to Gabinius in Egypt and his flight to Caesar in Gaul, that I may not be charged with going minutely into every detail; for I feel ashamed for you, that knowing him to be such a man, you appointed him tribune and master of the horse and subsequently consul. But I shall at present mention only his acts of drunken insolence and of villainy in these very offices.

Had he not at that time acted contrary to your wishes, Caesar would never have found an excuse for the wars and could not, in spite of all his shamelessness, have gathered a sufficient force in defiance of your resolutions; but he would either have voluntarily laid down his arms or have been brought to his senses unwillingly.

As it is, this fellow is the man who furnished Caesar with his excuses, who destroyed the prestige of the senate, who increased the audacity of the soldiers. He it is who planted the seeds of the evils which sprang up afterward; he it is who has proved the common bane, not only of us, but also of practically the whole world, as, indeed, Heaven clearly indicated.

Yet the price was nevertheless exacted from him with every indignity and show of violence; so thoroughly did even Caesar condemn his course. And all that he has acquired, vast in extent and levied from every source, he has swallowed up in dicing, in harlotry, in feasting and in drinking, like a second Charybdis.

and for the fact that the whole region of Pontus and Parthia was not subdued at that time immediately after the victory over Pharnaces. For Caesar, hastening hither with all speed to see what he was doing, did not entirely complete any of those projects, as he certainly might have done.

But you, unspeakable villain, begged and pled to be made a slave, as Postumius pled to be delivered to the Samnites, as Regulus to be given back to the Carthaginians, as Curtius that he might hurl himself into the chasm. And where did you find this recorded? In the same place, I suppose, where you discovered that the Cretans were to be made free after Brutus’ governorship, although it was after Caesar’s death that we voted he should govern them.