Searching for “=+Caesar -Cicero”

we, who have lived under a free government, should become slaves of our own accord? Or, again, if after gladly ridding ourselves of the dominion of Caesar, though we had already received many benefits at his hands, we should deliberately choose as our master in his stead this man, who is far worse than he?

For Caesar spared many after his victories in war, whereas this man before attaining any power slaughtered three hundred soldiers, among them some centurions, guilty of no wrongdoing, in his own country, and in the presence and sight of his wife, so that she was actually stained with their blood.

but in view of his former evil and licentious behaviour, not only after Caesar’s death but even in the latter’s lifetime, I decide that he has shown himself an enemy of our government and of our liberty and a plotter against them.

Is it not shameful, when Caesar, who has just emerged from boyhood and was but recently registered among the youths of military age, shows so great thought for the state as to spend his money and gather soldiers for its preservation, that we should neither choose to perform our duty ourselves nor to coöperate with him, even after obtaining a tangible proof of his good-will?

For while you praise the soldiers who discovered the wickedness of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar,—that is, to you through him,—you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing.

Yet there are only two courses open to us: either we must say that all these men, Caesar, I mean, and Brutus, the veterans, and the legions,—have planned unwisely and ought to suffer punishment, because without our sanction or that of the people they have dared to offer armed resistance to their consul, some having deserted his standard, and others having been gathered against him;

Who does not know that after causing all our domestic troubles himself he then shared the dangers as little as possible, tarrying long in Brundisium through cowardice, so that Caesar was isolated and almost failed on his account, and holding aloof from all the wars that followed against the Egyptians, against Pharnaces, Africa, and Spain?

a course which proved the chief cause of all the evils that subsequently befell us? Is he not the one who killed Clodius by the hand of Milo and slew Caesar by the hand of Brutus? The one who made Catiline hostile to us and put Lentulus to death without a trial?

To be sure, a measure was passed for your recall,—how and for what reasons I do not say,—but at any rate it was passed, and you did not set foot in Italy until the recall was granted to you. But Antony not only went away to Caesar to inform him what had been done, but also returned, without asking for any decree,

and then promptly deserted the man who failed, as if that somehow proved him in the wrong, and went over to the victor, as if he were more in the right. And thus, in addition to your other base deeds, you are so ungrateful that you not only are not satisfied to have been spared by Caesar, but are actually displeased because you were not made his master of horse.

“Then, with this on your conscience, do you dare to say that Antony ought not to have been master of the horse for a whole year, because Caesar himself ought not to have been dictator for a whole year? But whether or not it was wise or necessary for this to be done, at any rate both measures alike were passed, and they suited both us and the people.

‘But Pompey’s goods ought not to have been sold.’ Then it was we who erred and did wrong in confiscating them; or—to clear us both of blame—it was Caesar anyhow, I suppose, who acted irregularly, since he ordered this to be done; yet you did not censure him at all.

“So in these charges this remarkable fellow stands convicted of violently contradicting himself—yes, by Jupiter, and in the following statements also. At one time he says that Antony aided Caesar in every thing he did and by this means became more than any one else responsible for all our internal evils, and then he reproaches him with cowardice, charging him with having shared in no other exploits than those performed in Thessaly.

“That these and all his other acts, then, were correct and most thoroughly in accord with Caesar’s intention, the facts themselves show. For the rebellion went no farther, and Antony, far from suffering punishment for his course, was subsequently appointed consul.

Yet this same Antony, witness earth and gods! (I shall call louder than you and invoke them with greater justice), when he saw that the city was already in reality under a tyranny, inasmuch as all the legions obeyed Caesar and all the people together with the senate submitted to him