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MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

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mixed and mingled with us all, in the centre of this most grave and venerable assembly-are men sitting, quietly incubating a plot against my life, against all your lives, the life of every virtuous Senator and citizen; while I, with the whole nest of traitors brooding beneath my eyes, am parading in the petty formalities of debate, and the very men appear scarcely vulnerable by my voice who ought long since to have been cut down by the sword.

Go where destiny and The gates stand open.

Proceed, Catiline, in your meritorious career! desire drive you. Evacuate the city for a season. Begone! What a pity that the Manlian army should look so long for their general! Take all your loving friends along with you; or, if that be a vain hope, take, at least, as many as you can, and cleanse the city for some short time. Let the walls of Rome be the mediators between me and thee; for, at present, yon are much too near. I will not suffer you, I will not longer endure you!

Lucius Catiline, away! Begin as soon as you can this shameful and unnatural war. Begin it, on your part, under the shade of every dreadful omen; on mine, with the sure and certain hope of safety to my country, and glory to myself; and, when this you have done, then do thou, whose altar was first founded by the founder of our State-thou, the establisher of this city-pour out thy vengeance upon this man, and all his adherents! Save us from his fury, our public altars, our sacred temples, our houses and household goods, our liberties, our lives! Pursue, tutelar god, pursue them, these foes, to the gods and to goodness, these plunderers of Italy, these assassins of Rome! Erase them out of this life, and in the next let thy vengeance follow them stiil, insatiable, implacable, immortal.

THE CRUELTY OF VERRES

[From the arraignment of Verres we select Guthrie's translation of a passage in which Cicero announces, with words of burning indignation, his outrage against a Roman citizen-the claim of citizenship being held as a secure protection against stripes and torture.]

As it happened Verres came on that very day to Messana. The matter was brought before him. He was told that the man was a Roman citizen; was complaining that at Syracuse he had been confined in the stone quarries, and how he, when he was actually embarking on board ship and uttering violent threats against Verres, had been brought back by them, and reserved in order that he might himself decide what should be done with him.

He thanks the men, and praises their good-will and diligence in his behalf. He himself, inflamed with wickedness and frenzy, came into the

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forum. His eyes glared; cruelty was visible in his whole countenance; all men waited to see what steps he was going to take; what he was going to do; when all of a sudden he orders the man to be seized, and to be stripped and bound in the middle of the forum, and the rods to be got ready. The miserable man cried out that he was a Roman citizen; a citizen also of the municipal town of Cosa; that he had served with Lucius Pretius, a most illustrious Roman knight, who was living as a trader at Panormus, and from whom Verres might know that he was speaking the truth.

Then Verres says that he has ascertained that he was sent into Sicily by the leaders of the runaway slaves in order to act as a spy; a matter as to which there was no evidence, no trace, nor even the slightest suspicion in the mind of any one. Then he orders the man to be most violently scourged on all sides,—in the middle of the forum of Messana a Roman citizen, O judges, was beaten with rods! while, in the meantime, no groan was heard, no other expression was heard from the wretched man, amid all his pain, and between the sounds of the blows, except these words: "I am a citizen of Rome."

He fancied that by this one statement of his citizenship he could ward off all blows and remove all torture from his person. He not only did not succeed in averting by his entreaties the violence of the rods, but as he kept on repeating his entreaties, and the assertion of his citizenship a cross-a cross, I say was got ready for that miserable man, who had never witnessed such a stretch of power.

O the sweet name of Liberty! O the admirable privileges of citizenship! O Porcian law! O Sempronian laws! O power of the tribunes, bitterly regretted by and at last restored to the Roman people !—in a town of our confederate allies- -a Roman citizen should be bound in the forum and beaten with rods, by a man who had only the fasces and axes through the kindness of the Roman people!

If the bitter entreaties and the miserable cries of that man had no power to restrain you; were you not moved even by the weeping and loud cries of the Roman citizens who were present at the time? Did you dare to drag any one to the cross who said that he was a Roman citizen?

MARK ANTONY (83-30 B. C.)

THE AVENGER OF CAESAR

M

ARCUS ANTONIUS, or Mark Antony, as he is usually called, a brave and able general and the friend and lieutenant of Cæsar, became his avenger after his death at the hands of Brutus and his fellow-conspirators. By his artful and eloquent funeral oration over the body of the slain dictator he roused the fury of the populace against the conspirators, who were forced to flee from Rome. In the war that succeeded, Antony commanded the army by which that of Brutus and Cassius was defeated, Brutus killing himself on the battlefield. The remainder of the story of Antony has to do with the triumvirate (the three-man power) formed by Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, by which the freedom of Rome was again overthrown, -his fatal love for Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, his war with and defeat by Octavius, and his final suicide.

BRUTUS DENOUNCED

[Brutus, the leader of the conspirators, made a brief oration in his own defense over the dead body of Cæsar. He was followed by Mark Antony, as above stated. From Shakespeare's 'Julius Cæsar," we extract Antony's skillful and insidious reply, one of the most famous examples of oratorical composition in all literature. As we were obliged to go to the pages of the ancient historians for our examples of the speeches of several Greek and Roman orators, we seem equally justified in selecting those of Brutus and Antony from the great modern dramatist.]

FRIENDS, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears.

I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Cæsar!

The noble Brutus

Hath told you, Cæsar was ambitious.

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If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man,
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honorable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill;

Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?

When that the poor hath cried, Cæsar hath wept!
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that, on the Lupercal,

I thrice presented him a kingly crown;

Which he did thrice refuse: Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And sure he is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke;
But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once; not without cause;

What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?

O judgment thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there, with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.

O masters! if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men.

I will not do them wrong. I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.

But here's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar;
I found it in his closet; 'tis his will.

MARK ANTONY

Let but the commons hear this testament

(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read),

And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy,

Unto their issue.

Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men,
And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,
For if you should, O! what would come of it?
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle; I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on ;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,-
That day he overcame the Nervii.—

Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through;
See, what a rent the envious Casca made;
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed;
And, as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it ;
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel;
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him!
This, was the most unkindest cut of all.

For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,

Quite vanquished him! Then burst his mighty heart
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,

Even at the base of Pompey's statue

(Which all the while ran blood), great Cæsar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us !
O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity. These are gracious drops.

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