Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
by no sense of what we consider the decency of language.
He argues the question as to his house very well, as he did all
questions. He tells the priests that the whole joy of his restoration
must depend on their decision. Citizens who had hitherto been made
subject to such penalties had been malefactors; whereas, it was
acknowledged of him that he had been a benefactor to the city. Clodius
had set up on the spot, not a statue of Liberty, but, as was well known
to all men, the figure of a Greek prostitute. The priests had not been
consulted. The people had not ratified the proposed consecration. Of the
necessity of such authority he gives various examples. "And this has
been done," he says, "by an impure and impious enemy of all
religions--by this man among women, and woman among men--who has gone
through the ceremony so hurriedly, so violently, that his mind and his
tongue and his voice have been equally inconsistent with each other."
"My fortune," he says, as he ends his speech, "all moderate as it is,
will suffice for me. The memory of my name will be a patrimony
sufficient for my children;" but if his house be so taken from him, so
stolen, so falsely dedicated to religion, he cannot live without
disgrace. Of course he got back his house; and with his house about
L16,000 for its re-erection, and L4000 for the damage done to the
Tusculan villa with L2000 for the Formian villa. With these sums he was
not contented; and indeed they could hardly have represented fairly the
immense injury done to him.
[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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