Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (49 page)

[59] To criticize the rest of what he did, conscript fathers, is difficult and dangerous
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. He took part in the war.
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He drenched himself in the blood of citizens—better men than he. He met with good fortune—if there can be good fortune in crime. But since I am anxious not to upset the veterans—although their position is different from yours (they simply followed their leader, whereas you sought him out)—and do not want you to set them against me, I will say nothing about what sort of war it was.

From Thessaly you came back to Brundisium with the legions, victorious. And there you did not kill me.
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What a huge favour! For I
admit you could have done it, even though every single one of the people who were with you was in favour of my being spared. [60] So powerful is the love of one’s country that even to your legions I was inviolable, because they remembered that the country had been saved by me. But let us allow that you granted me what you did not take away from me, and that I owe you my life because you did not deprive me of it: how could I go on acknowledging this favour of yours (as I used to do) once you had insulted me, especially since you were well aware that what you said would prompt this speech from me in return?

[61] You arrived at Brundisium, then, into the bosom and embrace of your little starlet. What’s wrong? Am I not telling the truth? How distressing it is to be unable to deny what is so disgraceful to admit! If you felt no shame before the people from the country towns, what about the army veterans? Was there a single soldier at Brundisium who did not catch sight of her? A single soldier who was not aware that she had travelled for days on end to bring you her congratulations? A single soldier who was not sickened to discover so late in the day what a worthless man he had followed? [62] After that there was another trip through Italy, with the same actress in attendance. Soldiers were settled on the towns in an appallingly brutal fashion; and at Rome there was a hideous plundering of gold, silver, and especially—wine.

To crown all this, he was appointed—without Caesar’s knowledge, since Caesar was then at Alexandria, but by the gift of Caesar’s friends—Master of the Horse.
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So he thought that gave him the right to live with Hippias, and place hired horses with Sergius the actor.
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And he had chosen as his residence not the house which he is now only just holding on to, but that of Marcus Piso.
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Why should I mention his decrees, his plunderings, and his seizure and bestowal of the estates of the dead? Poverty compelled him; he had nowhere to turn. He had not yet come into his enormous inheritance from Lucius Rubrius, or the one from Lucius Turselius;
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and he had not yet succeeded to the fortunes of Gnaeus Pompeius and the many others who were not at Rome—an instant heir.
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No, he had to live as brigands do, owning only what he had managed to rob.

[63] But let us pass over these examples of a sturdy wickedness, and talk instead of a lightweight kind of worthlessness. You with that gullet of yours, that chest, that gladiator’s physique downed such a
quantity of wine at Hippias’ wedding that you were forced to throw up in full view of the Roman people—the next day. What a disgusting sight—disgusting even to hear of! Had this happened to you at dinner, as you knocked back bottle after bottle, is there anyone who would not have thought it outrageous? But at a gathering of the Roman people, while conducting public business, as Master of the Horse, when a mere belch would have been shocking, he vomited, filling his lap and the whole platform with morsels of food stinking of wine! But he himself concedes that this was among his grosser achievements. Let us move on, then, to his greater ones.

[64] Caesar returned from Alexandria
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—blessed by fortune, he reckoned; but to my way of thinking, no man can be fortunate who brings bad luck on his country. A spear was planted in front of the temple of Jupiter Stator,
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and the property of Gnaeus Pompeius was subjected—I can hardly continue; I have no tears left, but the pain remains fixed in my heart—the property, I tell you, of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was subjected to the pitiless cry of an auctioneer. On that occasion, and on that occasion only, the country forgot its servitude and gasped: though their hearts were enslaved—since fear governed everything—the Roman people let out a gasp that was free. Everyone waited to see who could be so treacherous, so insane, so hostile to the gods and mankind as to dare to bid in that wicked auction. But no one came forward except Antonius—even though there were many others standing around that spear who would have stopped at nothing else: he alone came forward to dare the deed which all the other criminals had recoiled and shrunk from perpetrating.

[65] Were you so overcome by doziness, then—or, to be more accurate, by insanity—as to purchase confiscated property (a man of your birth!), and the property of Pompeius too, without appreciating that it makes you accursed in the eyes of the Roman people, an object of detestation, and the enemy of all the gods and all mankind now and for ever more? But how presumptuous was the way in which this spendthrift immediately threw himself on the property of the man whose valour caused the name of Rome to fill foreign peoples with terror, but whose fairness caused it to fill them with love!

So, drenching himself with the wealth of that great man, he danced for joy, like a character from a play, ‘rags to riches’.
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But, as some poet
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has it: ‘Ill gotten, ill spent.’ [66] It is incredible and weird
how he squandered so much property in so few, I will not say months, but days. There was a vast quantity of wine, an enormous weight of the purest silver, valuable textiles, and a large store of elegant and beautiful furniture from numerous houses—the belongings not of a sybarite, but of a man of ample means. Within a few days, it had all gone. [67] What Charybdis
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was ever so all-consuming? Charybdis did I say? If that ever existed, it was only a single creature. I call heaven to witness that Ocean itself could scarcely have swallowed up so many things, so widely dispersed in places so far apart, in so short a time. Nothing was secured, nothing was kept under seal, nothing was catalogued. Whole cellars were given away to the most worthless individuals. Actors came and took what they liked, as did actresses. The house was packed with gamblers, filled with drunks. Drinking went on for days on end, all over the place. Often, too—for he is not always lucky—gambling losses piled up; and in the slaves’ cubicles you could see beds made up with the purple bedspreads of Gnaeus Pompeius. So stop being surprised at how quickly this property was used up. Such prodigality could quickly have devoured not just one man’s patrimony,
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however rich it was—and this was rich—but entire cities and kingdoms.

But the house itself and the property outside the city—[68] monstrous effrontery! Did you dare to enter that house, did you dare to cross its hallowed threshold, did you dare to show your revolting face before its household gods? For a long time no one could set eyes on that house, no one could pass it without weeping: are you not ashamed to have been a lodger in it all this time? After all, in spite of your own ignorance, there is nothing in it that can give you any pleasure. Or when you see those naval trophies
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in the forecourt, do you suppose it is your own house that you are entering? That is impossible. You may be without sense or feeling—indeed, you are—but you do at least recognize yourself, your own things, your own people. In fact, I do not believe that you can ever have a moment’s peace, awake or asleep. You may be crazed and violent—you are—but whenever you see a vision of that unique man, you must inevitably start in terror from your sleep, and often be driven insane when awake.

[69] For my part, I pity the very walls and roof. For what had that house ever witnessed that was not decorous, what that was not in the best traditions and displaying the highest moral standards? As you
are well aware, conscript fathers, that great man was as respected at home as he was famous abroad, nor did he merit higher praise for his foreign victories than he did for his domestic conduct. Yet in his house the bedrooms have now been turned into knocking-shops, and the dining rooms into greasy spoons. But Antonius these days denies it. Don’t ask: he’s turned frugal! He has told that woman of his to pack her bags and go, has taken away her keys as the Twelve Tables prescribe,
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and has put her out into the street. What an upright citizen, what a worthy man! In the whole of his life, the most honourable thing he has ever done is to have divorced an actress!

[70] But how he keeps going on about ‘both consul and Antonius’!
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He might as well have said, ‘both consul and libertine’, or ‘both consul and wastrel’. For does ‘Antonius’ signify anything else? If the name carried any prestige, your grandfather
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would, I imagine, have referred to himself at some time or other as ‘both consul and Antonius’. But he never did. My colleague, your uncle,
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would have done so too—unless of course there is no Antonius but yourself !

I leave out those misdemeanours which do not relate to the part you played in attacking the country, and return instead to your own particular role—that is, to the Civil War, whose birth, formation, and nurturing were entirely your own doing.

[71] At this point
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you took no part in that war, being too cowardly—and also too lustful. You had already tasted the blood of your fellow-citizens, or rather drunk deeply of it: you had fought at Pharsalus. At the head of your squad, you had killed the high-ranking and illustrious Lucius Domitius;
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and you had also tracked down and brutally murdered many other fugitives from that battle whom Caesar would very possibly have spared, as he did others. After such heroic deeds as these, how was it that you did not go with Caesar to Africa, especially with so much of the war still to be fought? And how did you stand with him after his return from Africa?
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How did he rate you? You had been quaestor
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to him as general, Master of the Horse
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to him as dictator, the originator of his war, the instigator of his cruelty, a sharer in his booty, and under the terms of his will, as you yourself used to claim, his son;
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and he called on you to pay him the money you owed for the house, the suburban property, and everything that you had bought at auction.

[72] Your initial response was one of defiance. I do not want to be criticizing you in everything, so let me say that it was fair and
reasonable enough. ‘Why does Gaius Caesar demand money from me? Why not I from him? Or did he win without my help? He couldn’t have done. I gave him his pretext for the Civil War; I proposed pernicious legislation; I took up arms against the consuls and commanders of the Roman people, against the senate and people of Rome, against our country’s gods, altars, and hearths, and against our country itself. Surely it wasn’t only for his own benefit that he won? Shouldn’t those who shared in the crime have a share in the spoils as well?’ You were justified in asking this—but what did justice have to do with it? He was the more powerful.

[73] So your protests were brushed aside, and Caesar sent soldiers to you and your sureties. Then all of a sudden you produced that famous list. How people laughed, that in such a long list, consisting of so many properties of every kind, there was in fact nothing, except a share in that place at Misenum,
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that the vendor could call his own! The auction itself was a sorry spectacle: draperies of Pompeius’, several only, soiled; some silver items, also Pompeius’, damaged; some filthy slaves. It made us upset that there was anything still left for us to see.

[74] However, the heirs of Lucius Rubrius,
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backed by a decree from Caesar, stopped the sale from taking place. Our prodigal was stuck: he did not know where to turn. Indeed, it was at that time that an assassin sent by Antonius was allegedly arrested at Caesar’s house with a dagger; and Caesar, openly attacking you, complained about it in the senate.
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Then he set out for Spain,
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after giving you, in view of your poverty, a few extra days to pay up. But not even then did you follow him. So fine a gladiator, and yet so quick to take your discharge? Who, then, would be afraid of this man so hesitant in standing up for his own faction—that is, for his own self-interest?
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[75] He did eventually set out for Spain; but he could not, he says, reach it in safety. So how did Dolabella
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manage to get there? You should either not have joined Caesar’s side, Antonius, or, once you had joined it, you should have followed it to the end. Three times Caesar fought against citizens, in Thessaly, Africa, and Spain.
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In all those battles, Dolabella was at his side; and in the one in Spain he even sustained a wound. If you ask my opinion, I wish he had not taken part; but although we should fault his decision, his consistency at least was commendable. But what about you? The children of Gnaeus Pompeius were attempting in the first place to recover their
country. Very well, then; let us agree that this concerned the whole of your party equally. But they were also attempting to recover their own ancestral gods, altars, hearths, and family home—and it was
you
who had taken those. Now when they were resorting to arms to recover what was legally theirs, who had the best justification (though, in an unjustifiable situation, what justification can there be?) for fighting against the children of Gnaeus Pompeius? Who? You, of course, who had acquired their property. [76] Or was Dolabella battling on your behalf in Spain just so you could remain at Narbo
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and vomit up the food your host there put in front of you?

But what a homecoming from Narbo—and he even asked why I had returned so suddenly from the journey
I
had undertaken!
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I explained the other day, conscript fathers, why it was that I came back: I wanted, if possible, to be of service to the state even before 1 January. As to your enquiry about the manner of my return, first of all it was in daylight, not under cover of dark; then it was in boots and a toga, not in slippers
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and a shawl. I can see you staring at me, and I can tell you are seething. But I am sure you would be friends with me again if you appreciated the shame I feel at your behaviour—although you yourself feel no shame at it. Of all the most outrageous crimes, I have never seen or heard anything more disgraceful. Though you supposed yourself to have been Master of the Horse,
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though you were standing for the consulship (or rather asking Caesar for it) for the following year, nevertheless you raced through the towns and colonies of Gaul, the region where we used to campaign for the consulship in the days when that office was stood for and not asked for, in slippers and a shawl!