Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
We have records of at least a dozen speeches, made B.C. 55 and B.C. 54,
between that against Piso and the next that is extant, which was
delivered in defence of Plancius. He defended Cispius, but Cispius was
convicted. He defended Caninius Gallus, of whom we may presume that he
was condemned and exiled, because Cicero found him at Athens on his way
to Cilicia, Athens being the place to which exiled Roman oligarchs
generally betook themselves.[35] In this letter to his young friend
Caelius he speaks of the pleasure he had in meeting with Caninius at
Athens; but in the letter to Marius which I have quoted he complains of
the necessity which has befallen him of defending the man. The heat of
the summer of this year he passed in the country, but on his return to
the city in November he found Crassus defending his old enemy Gabinius.
Gabinius had crept back from his province into the city, and had been
received with universal scorn and a shower of accusations. Cicero at
first neither accused nor defended him, but, having been called on as a
witness, seems to have been unable to refrain from something of the
severity with which he had treated Piso. There was at any rate a passage
of arms in which Gabinius called him a banished criminal.[36] The Senate
then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. He was, however,
afterward driven by the expostulations of Pompey to defend the man. At
his first trial Gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished
when Cicero defended him. Cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint
thus put upon him by Pompey, and refused Pompey till Caesar's request was
added. We can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the
obligation thus forced upon him. We have nothing of the speech left, but
can hardly believe that it was eloquent. From this, however, there rose
a reconciliation between Crassus and Cicero, both Caesar and Pompey
having found it to their interest to interfere. As a result of this,
early in the next year Cicero defended Crassus in the Senate, when an
attempt was made to rob the late Consul of his coveted mission to Syria.
Of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to Crassus,[37]
which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as
base. He despised Crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things
he had said of him; but we have no right to think that Cicero could have
been altogether unlike a Roman. He speaks also in the Senate on behalf
of the people of Tenedos, who had brought their immunities and
privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. All we know of
this speech is that it was spoken in vain. He pleaded against an Asiatic
king, Antiochus of Comagene, who was befriended by Pompey, but Cicero
seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[38] He
spoke for the inhabitants of Reate on some question of water-privilege
against the Interamnates. Interamna we now know as Terne, where a modern
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account