XXXVII. To encounter voluntarily such great grief of mind, and by oneself to endure, while the city is standing those things which, when a city is taken, befal the conquered citizens; to see oneself torn from the embrace of one’s friends, one’s houses destroyed, one’s property plundered; above all, for the sake of one’s country, to lose one’s country itself, to be stripped of the most honourable favours of the Roman people, to be precipitated from the highest rank of dignity, to see one’s enemies in their robes of office demanding to conduct one’s funeral before one’s death has been properly mourned;—to undergo all these troubles for the sake of saving one’s fellow-citizens, and this with such feelings that you are miserable while absent, not being as wise as those philosophers who care for nothing, but being as attached to one’s relations and to oneself as the common feelings and rights of men require;—that is illustrious and godlike glory. For he who with a calm spirit for the sake of the republic abandons those things which he has never considered dear or delightful; is not showing any remarkable good-will towards the republic; but he who abandons those things for the sake of the republic from which he is not torn without the greatest agony, his country is dear to that man, and he prefers her safety to his affection for his own relations. Wherefore, that fury may burst itself, and it must hear me say these things since it has provoked me—I have twice saved the republic; both when as consul in the garb of peace I subdued armed enemies, and when as a private individual I yielded to the consuls in arms. Of each piece of conduct I have reaped the greatest reward: I reaped the reward of my first achievement when I saw the senate and all virtuous men, in pursuance of a resolution of the senate, change their garments for the sake of my safety; and that of my subsequent conduct, when the senate, and the Roman people, and all men, whether in a public or a private capacity, decided that without my return the republic would not be safe.
But this return of mine, O priests, depends now on your decision. For if you place me in my house, then I do plainly see and feel that I am restored, which is what all through my cause you have been always labouring to effect by your displays of zeal, by your counsels, and influence, and resolutions; but if my house is not only not restored to me, but is even allowed to continue to furnish my enemy with a memorial of my distress, of his own wicked triumph, of the public calamity, who is there who will consider this a restoration, and not rather an eternal punishment? Moreover, my house, O priests, is in the sight of the whole city; and if there remains in it that (I will not call it monument of the city, but that) tomb inscribed with the name of my enemy, I had better migrate to some other spot, rather than dwell in that city in which I am to see trophies erected as tokens of victory over me and over the republic.
XXXVIII. Could I have such hardness of mind or such shamelessness of eye, as to be able in that city, the preserver of which the senate has so often unanimously decided that I am, to behold my house thrown down, not by my own private enemy, but by the common foe, and then again built up and placed in the sight of the whole city, that the weeping of the virtuous citizens might know no cessation? The house of Spurius Mælius, who aimed at the kingdom, was razed. What else ensued? The Roman people by the very name of Æquimælium, which they gave the place, decided that what had happened to Mælius was deserved; the punishment inflicted on his folly was approved. The house of Spurius Cassius was destroyed for the same reason; and on the same spot was built the temple of Tellus. The house of Marcus Vaccus Ref. 015 was in Vaccus’s meadows, which was confiscated and destroyed in order that his crime might be kept alive in people’s recollection by the name of the place. Marcus Manlius, when he had beaten back the attack of the Gauls from the Capitoline steep, was not content with the renown of his good deed; he was adjudged to have aimed at regal power, and on that account you see that his house was pulled down and the place covered with two groves. That therefore which our ancestors considered the greatest penalty which could be inflicted on wicked and infamous citizens, am I to undergo and to endure, so as to appear to posterity not to have been the extinguisher of conspiracy and wickedness, but its author and leader? And will the dignity of the Roman people, O priests, be able to support this stain of infamy and inconsistency, while the senate lives, while you are the chief men of the public council, if the house of Marcus Tullius Cicero appears joined with the house of Fulvius Flaccus by the memory of a punishment publicly inflicted? Marcus Flaccus, because he had acted with Caius Gracchus in a manner opposed to the safety of the republic, was put to death by the sentence of the senate, and his house was destroyed and confiscated; and on the spot Quintus Catulus some time after erected a portico out of the spoils of the Cimbri. But that firebrand and fury of his country, when, under those great generals Piso and Gabinius, he had taken the city, and occupied, and was in entire possession of it, at one and the same time destroyed the memorials of a most illustrious man who was dead, and united my house with the house of Marcus Flaccus, in order that he, after he had crushed the senate, might inflict on him whom the conscript fathers had pronounced to be the saviour of his country, the same punishment which the senate had inflicted on the destroyer of the constitution.
XXXIX. But will you allow this portico to stand on the Palatine Hill, and on the most beautiful spot in the whole city, erected as an everlasting token to keep alive the recollection of all nations and of all ages of the frenzy of the tribunes, of the wickedness of the consuls, of the cruelty of the conspirators, of the calamity of the republic, and of my sufferings? A portico which, out of the affection which you have and always have had for the republic, you ought to wish to pull down, not only by your votes, but, if it were necessary, even by your hands. Unless, perchance, the religious consecration of it by that chastest of pontiffs deters any one.
O that action, which careless men will never cease to laugh at, but which graver citizens cannot hear of without the greates, indignation; has Publius Clodius, who removed religion even out of the house of the Pontifex Maximus, Ref. 016 introduced it into mine? Do you, you who are the ministers of the religious ceremonies and sacrifices, admit this man to be an originator and regulator of public religion? O ye immortal gods! (for I wish you to hear these things), does Publius Clodius have the management of your sacred rites? Does he feel a reverent awe of your divine power? Is he a man who thinks that all human affairs are regulated by your providence? Is he not mocking the authority of all those eminent men who are here present? Is he not abusing your authority, O priests? Can any expression of religion escape or fall from that mouth? of religion, which with that same mouth you have most foully and shamefully violated, by accusing the senate of passing severe degrees about religion.
XL. Behold, behold, O priests, this religious man, and if it seems good to you, (and it is only the duty of virtuous priests,) warn him that there are some fixed limits to religion; that a man ought not to be too superstitious. Why was it necessary for you, O fanatical man, with an old woman’s superstition, to go to see a sacred ceremony which was being performed at another person’s