Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (50 page)

[77] But consider the frivolity of the man. When he reached Saxa Rubra
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between three and four in the afternoon, he went into hiding in a grotty pub and lay low there getting drunk until it was dark. Then he got into a gig and sped on his way to Rome, his face muffled, and arrived at his own house. The doorman: ‘Who is it?’ ‘A courier from Marcus.’ He was taken immediately to the woman he had come to see,
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and handed her a letter. While she read it, weeping—for it was written in the language of a lover (the gist of it was that he was going to have nothing further to do with that actress of his, and that he had abandoned his passion for her and made it all over to her instead)—while she was weeping copiously, the poor man could bear it no longer: he revealed his face, and threw his arms
around her. What a worthless individual! What else can I call him? I cannot think of a better description. Was it, then, so that your wife could get a surprise when she saw you, her pretty boy, when you unexpectedly revealed yourself, that you subjected Rome to a night alarm, and Italy to many days of uneasiness?
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[78] Your reason within your home was one of love; but outside it your reason was even more discreditable—to prevent Lucius Plancus
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selling up your sureties. And when a tribune of the plebs brought you before a public meeting and you replied that you had come on your own ‘private affairs’, you gave rise to all sorts of jokes at your own expense.
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But that’s too much about these trifles: let us pass on to more serious matters.

When Gaius Caesar came back from Spain,
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you went further than anyone else to meet him. You travelled back the way you had come, to make sure that he should recognize, if not your courage, then at least your energy. Somehow or other you were readmitted to his friendship. This was how Caesar operated: if a man were utterly ruined by debt and poverty, and he recognized that he was a worthless but impulsive character, then he was quite happy to have him as one of his friends. [79] Since your own qualifications in this respect were unimpeachable, orders were given for you to be elected consul
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—and as Caesar’s colleague. I make no complaint about Dolabella, who was encouraged, brought forward, and then frustrated. Is there anyone who is unaware of the treachery of both of you towards Dolabella in this matter? Caesar induced him to stand and then, when he had promised him the office and guaranteed it, intervened and transferred it to himself; and you then attributed to Caesar’s treachery what had in fact been your own wish all along.

The first of January arrived. We were summoned to a meeting of the senate; and Dolabella made a much fuller and better prepared attack on Antonius than I am doing now.
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[80] But by the gods, what a reply he goaded Antonius into making! In the first place, although Caesar had made it quite clear that he would order Dolabella’s election as consul before he himself left Rome
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(he was always saying and doing things of this sort, and yet people still maintain he was not a king!)—although Caesar had said this, our fine augur here
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announced that he had been elected to that priesthood so that he could use the auspices either to block or to invalidate elections, and that was what in this case he proposed to do.

In the first place, observe the astonishing stupidity of the man.
[81] How so? The action which you said you could take by virtue of being a priest—would you have been any less able to take it if you had not been augur, but
had
been consul? You could in fact have taken it even more easily. For we augurs only have the right to report omens which have actually occurred, whereas the consuls and other magistrates can watch for ones that have not. All right, then: he didn’t know what he was talking about. After all, it is no use demanding professional knowledge from a man who is never sober! But consider his impudence: many months before this,
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he announced in the senate that he would either use the auspices to forbid Dolabella’s election or do what in the event he did.
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Can anyone tell in advance what is going to be wrong with the auspices unless he has decided to watch the heavens? But that is illegal at an election; and if anyone has been watching the heavens, he has to report the fact before the elections are held, not once they have begun. But this is impudence intermingled with ignorance: he no more knows what an augur ought to know than he acts as a decent man should.

[82] Now recall his consulship from 1 January down to 15 March. Was any flunkey ever so subservient, so grovelling? He could do nothing on his own initiative; he asked permission for everything; sticking his head into the back of his colleague’s litter,
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he would ask him for favours that he could then go on to sell.

The day of Dolabella’s election then came round. Lots were drawn to determine which century should be the first to vote:
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Antonius held his peace. The result was announced:
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Antonius said not a word. The first class was called; the result was announced. Then, as always happens, the six centuries of equestrians; then the second class; and all this was done faster than I can describe it. [83] After the business had been completed, our fine augur (you could call him Gaius Laelius!)
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announced: ‘Adjourned’. What unparalleled impudence! What had you seen? What had you felt? What had you heard? For you did not say at the time, nor do you say now, that you had been watching the heavens. So the religious objection which you had already foreseen on1 January and foretold so far in advance duly came to pass! Therefore, by Hercules, I hope that your fabrication of the auspices will not bring catastrophe on the state, but on you instead! You implicated the Roman people in your religious crime. As augur you obstructed an augur; as consul you obstructed a consul.
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I do not wish to say any more, in case I appear to be subverting Dolabella’s consular acts, which will have at some point to be referred to our college.
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[84] But observe the arrogance and insolence of the man. So long as
you
wish, Dolabella’s election is invalid; but the moment your wishes change, the auspices were in order.
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If it means nothing when an augur makes an announcement in the words that you used, then admit that, when you used the word ‘adjourned’, you were drunk. But if that word does have force, then please tell me, augur to augur, what it is.

But I don’t want my speech to skip over the single most glorious of all the many exploits of Marcus Antonius; so let me come to the Lupercalia.
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He is not acting the innocent, conscript fathers: he looks embarrassed, and is sweating and pale. But he can do as he pleases—so long as he does not do what he did at the Porticus Minucia!
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What can one say in defence of such disgraceful behaviour? I look forward to hearing, because I want to see the point at which the plain of Leontini comes into view.
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[85] Your colleague
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was sitting on the rostra, dressed in a purple toga, seated on a golden chair, a wreath upon his head. You climbed the steps, you approached the chair, a Lupercus (you were indeed a Lupercus—but you should have remembered that you were also a consul)
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—and you held out a diadem. Throughout the forum, there was an audible gasp. Where had you got the diadem from? You hadn’t just found it on the ground and picked it up: you had brought it with you—a deliberate, premeditated crime. You kept on trying to place the diadem on Caesar’s head, as the people shouted their disapproval; he kept on rejecting it, to the people’s applause. So, you criminal, you were revealed as the one and only person who, as well as setting up a tyranny and wanting to have your colleague as your master, were in addition putting the Roman people to the test to see what they would tolerate and endure.

[86] But you even made a play for sympathy: you threw yourself as a suppliant at his feet. What were you begging for? To be a slave? You should have requested that role for yourself alone, you whose manner of living since your early years showed that you would submit to anything, would happily accept servitude.
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You certainly had no right to make the request on our behalf, or on that of the Roman people. What magnificent eloquence you displayed—when you addressed a public meeting in the nude! What could be more
disgraceful than this, what more disgusting, what more deserving of every kind of punishment? Surely you are not waiting for us to jab you with cattle-prods?
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If you have any human feeling at all, my words must tear you, must make you bleed. I am afraid that what I am about to say may detract from the glory of our greatest heroes,
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but I am carried away by the grief I feel: what is more unseemly than that the man who offered the diadem should live, while the man who rejected it should by common consent have been justly killed?

[87] But he
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also ordered the following entry to be added to the calendar, under ‘Lupercalia’: ‘To Gaius Caesar, dictator for life,
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the consul Marcus Antonius offered the title of King by order of the people;
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Caesar declined it.’ But now, now, I am not in the least surprised that you disrupt the peace; that you detest not merely the city, but even the light of day; and that you spend not just all day but every day drinking in the company of the worst of brigands. After all, in peacetime, where can you go? What place can there be for you amid those very laws and courts which you tried your utmost to abolish by means of a king’s tyranny? Was it for this that Lucius Tarquinius was driven out, was it for this that Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius, and Marcus Manlius
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were killed—so that, many centuries later, against the will of the gods, a king should be installed at Rome by Marcus Antonius?

[88] But let us go back to the auspices, the matter Caesar was on the point of raising in the senate on 15 March. Tell me: what would you have done then? My information was that you had come prepared, thinking that I was going to speak about the auspices you had fabricated, but which nevertheless had to be heeded. The good fortune of the country put an end to that day’s debate. But surely Caesar’s assassination did not also put an end to your view on the auspices?
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However, I have now reached a point where more important matters arise than those I have begun to discuss.

What an escape you made on that glorious day, what terror you showed, and what little confidence you had that your own life would be spared, so conscious were you of your crimes! But after you had fled the scene, you secretly took refuge at your own house, thanks to the kindness of people who wanted you kept safe—if, that is, you proved to be of sound mind. [89] How accurate have my prophecies always been, yet how little believed! I spoke on the Capitol to the heroes who had liberated us. They wanted me to go to you and urge
you to defend the country; but I told them that as long as you were afraid, you would promise anything they asked, but as soon as you had stopped being afraid, you would revert to your old self. So while the other consulars were going back and forth, I held to my opinion. I did not see you on that day or the next;
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nor did I believe that there was any chance of making any pact which would unite the finest Roman citizens with a relentless public enemy.

Two days later I came into the temple of Tellus,
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reluctantly, since armed guards had been stationed at all the entrances. [90] What a day that was for you, Antonius! Although you have suddenly become my enemy, I pity you for the damage you have done to yourself. Immortal gods, how truly great a man you would have been if you could only have maintained the stance you took on that day! We would have peace, peace made through a hostage, a boy of noble birth—the grandson of Marcus Bambalio!
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Although fear was turning you into a good citizen, fear is only in the short term a teacher of duty; and that unscrupulousness of yours, which never deserts you so long as you are not afraid, has turned you into a scoundrel.

And yet at that time, when many people (but not I) thought very well of you, you behaved in an utterly criminal fashion in the way you presided over the tyrant’s funeral—if funeral is what it was.
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[91] Yours was that touching laudation, yours was that appeal to pity, yours was that call to action. It was you, yes, you, who lit those firebrands, both the ones with which Caesar was half-burnt and those with which the house of Lucius Bellienus
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was set on fire and destroyed. It was you who launched those attacks on our houses—from criminals and, particularly, slaves—which we repelled by force of arms. Yet it was also you who, wiping the soot from yourself as it were, spent the other days on the Capitol carrying excellent decrees of the senate to the effect that no tablet granting exemption
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after 15 March, or any grant, should be posted. You remember yourself what you said about exiles, and you know what you said about exemptions. But best of all was that you removed the title ‘dictator’ from the constitution for all time: by this action it looked as if you had conceived such a hatred of tyranny that you wanted to remove all fear of it.

[92] Some people believed that the state had been re-established, but I did not think so for a moment: with you at the helm, I was afraid of shipwreck. And I wasn’t wrong, was I? That he couldn’t be
false to his nature for long? Before your very eyes, gentlemen, notices were posted all over the Capitol. Exemptions were sold not only to individuals, but to whole communities.
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Citizenship was no longer given out on an individual basis, but to entire provinces.
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If these measures are allowed to stand—and they cannot do so without the state falling—then you have lost whole provinces, conscript fathers, and not merely the revenues but the empire of the Roman people will have been reduced by Antonius’ private market.

[93b] There are countless concessions which have been bought from persons close to you,
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and not without your knowledge. One stands out, however: the decree which was posted on the Capitol regarding King Deiotarus,
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the loyal friend of the Roman people. When it was put up, although people were scandalized, no one could help laughing.