M. Tullius Cicero, Orations: Three orations on the Agrarian law, the four against Catiline, the orations for Rabirius, Murena, Sylla, Archias, Flaccus, Scaurus, etc. (ed. C. D. Yonge)

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THE SPEECH OF M. T. CICERO AFTER HIS RETURN. ADDRESSED TO THE SENATE.

THE ARGUMENT.

Cicero by his conduct in the conspiracy of Catiline had made many enemies, as there were many citizens of high rank and great influence more or less implicated in that treason. And besides those men, he had mortally offended a profligate senator, named Clodius, against whom he had appeared as a witness on a trial for impiety. Clodius, (by the assistance of Julius Caesar, who was offended with Cicero for refusing to support the measures of the triumvirate,) got adopted as a plebeian, in order to be made tribune of the people, so as to have the greater power to annoy Cicero. He was elected tribune A. U. C. 696. And the consuls, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus and Aulus Gabinius, were also enemies to Cicero. After some preliminary laws, mostly aimed, in Cicero's opinion, at him, Clodius proposed a special law, “that whoever had taken away the life of a citizen uncondemned and without a trial, should be prohibited from fire and water.” This alluded especially to Cicero's having executed the accomplices of Catiline; and he accordingly changed his dress, as it was usual for people to do in the case of a public impeachment, and appeared in the streets in a mourning robe, and the whole body of the knights and the young nobility, to the number of twenty thousand, as he says himself in his speech to the people after his return, also changed their dress, and accompanied him about the city to protect him from the insults of Clodius's partisans, and to implore the assistance of the people. And all this body went to the consuls to implore their favour for Cicero; but Piso refused to see them, and Gabinius treated them with the greatest insolence, which caused such indignation in the assembly that Ninnius the tribune made a motion (which was carried unanimously) that the senate also should put on mourning robes. The consuls issued an edict forbidding them to do so. On one occasion Clodius with his slaves fell on Cicero's partisans and attacked them so violently that Hortensius was nearly killed and Vibienus, a senator, died of the wounds he received. Caesar openly espoused the cause of Clodius, declaring that he had always thought the proceedings against Lentulus and the rest irregular and illegal. And Pompey, who had at first espoused Cicero's cause began to be alarmed, and to avoid giving him any effectual assistance. And the disturbances in Rome rose to such a height, that Cicero, by the advice of his friends, and especially of Cato, Hortensius, and Atticus, went into voluntary exile.

As soon as he had departed, Clodius filled the forum with his own partisans and his slaves, and proposed a law in the following terms: “Whereas Marcus Tullius Cicero has put Roman citizens to death unheard and uncondemned; and for that end forged the authority and decree of the senate; may it please you to ordain that he be interdicted from fire and water; that nobody presume to harbour or receive him, on pain of death; and that whoever shall move, speak, vote, or take any step towards recalling him, shall be treated as a public enemy, unless those should first be recalled to life whom Cicero unlawfully put to death.” ¹ The name of Sedulius, one of the meanest of the people, was affixed to the law as if he had been its proposer, who afterwards declared that he was not in Rome at the time, and that he had known nothing about it.

Cicero went to Thessalonica. He had not been gone more than two months when Ninnius made a motion in the senate to recall him and to repeal the law which Clodius had enacted against him, and it would have been carried had not Aelius Ligur, one of the tribunes, interposed his veto. The senate, however, passed a resolution that no business should be proceeded with till the consuls had prepared a new law respecting Cicero's affairs. Pompey, too, began to feel the want of Cicero's assistance, and consulted Caesar as to the expediency of promoting his recall.

The new consuls were Publius Cornelius Lentulus, a warm friend of Cicero, and Quintus Metellus Nepos, who had been his enemy but who now, out of complaisance to the triumvirate, promised to assist in his restoration. One of the tribunes elect, whose name was Sextus, was also very eager in his cause; but Clodius bribed two of those who were coming into office, Servius Atilius Serranus and Numerius Quinctius Gracchus, to oppose all measures for his restoration. On the first of January the moment that the new consuls entered on their office, Lentulus made a motion in the senate for Cicero's recall; Metellus also spoke in favour of it, and Cotta, whose opinion was first asked declared that as Cicero had not been banished legally but had only retired from the city of his own accord for the sake of peace, there was [p. 472] no law requisite for his recall; but that a vote of the senate would be sufficient. The motion would have passed at once had not Serranus interposed his veto. Great disturbances ensued in Rome; Fabricius, one of the tribunes favourable to Cicero, was attacked with a party of his friends by Clodius at the head of a band of gladiators, whom he had purchased; and great numbers of citizens were slain, so that Cicero says, (Pro Sestio, 35-38,) that there had never been such bloodshed in Rome except in the time of Cinna. The senate passed a resolution that no business should be done till the vote for Cicero's recall was carried, and ordered the consuls to summon all the people of Italy who wished well to the state to come to the assistance and defence of Cicero. Pompey was at this time at Capua acting as chief magistrate of his new colony, where he presided in person at their making a decree in Cicero's honour, and took the trouble likewise of visiting all the other colonies and chief towns in those parts, to appoint them a day of general rendezvous at Rome to assist at the promulgation of the desired law. At last a decree to recall Cicero was carried, to the great joy of all the people; but for some time Clodius was enabled to prevent any regular law being passed to that effect, till at last all his partisans were afraid to stand by him any longer, and it was not until the fourth of August that the law was finally carried.

Cicero, in anticipation of it, had already embarked for Italy, and on the fifth of August he landed at Brundusium. He was received with the greatest honours by every town through which he passed on his way to Rome, and multitudes came from all quarters to see him and to escort him; and on his arrival in the city he was received with universal acclamations.

He arrived in the city on the fourth of September, and the next day the consuls summoned the senate to give him an opportunity of addressing that body, when he made the following speech.

I. If, O conscript fathers, I return you thanks in a very inadequate manner for your kindness to me, and to my brother, and to my children, (which shall never be forgotten by us,) I beg and entreat you not to attribute it so much to any coldness of my disposition, as to the magnitude of the service which you have done me. For what fertility of genius, what copiousness of eloquence can be so great, what language can be found of such divine and extraordinary power, as to enable any one, I will not say to do due honour to the universal kindness of you all towards us, but even to count up and enumerate all the separate acts of kindness which we have received from you? You have restored to me my brother; whom I have wished for above all things; you have restored me to my most affectionate brother; you have restored us parents to our children, and our children to us; you have restored to us our dignity, our rank, our fortunes, the republic, which we reverence above all things, and our country, than which nothing can be dearer to us; you have restored us, in short, to ourselves.

[2]  And if we ought to consider our parents most dear to us, because by them our life, our property, our freedom, and our rights as citizens have been given to us; if we love the immortal gods, by whose kindness we have preserved all those things, and have also had other benefits added to them; if we are most deeply attached to the Roman people owing to the honours paid to us by whom we have been placed in this most noble council, and in the very highest rank and dignity and in this citadel of the whole earth, if we are devoted to this order of the senate by which we have been frequently distinguished by most honourable decrees in our favour, surely it is a boundless and infinite obligation which we are under to you, who, by your singular zeal and unanimity an my behalf, have combined at one time the benefits done us by our parents, the bounty of the immortal gods, the honours conferred on us by the Roman people, and your own frequent decisions in my case; in such a manner that, owing, as we do, much to you, and great gratitude to the Roman people, and innumerable thanks to our parents, and everything to the immortal gods, the honours and enjoyments which we had separately before by their instrumentality, we have now recovered all together by your kindness.

¹ I take the terms of this law from Middleton's Life, from which indeed, I have abridged this argument; which is in some degree the argument of the three following speeches.

This text is based on the following book(s):
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
OCLC: 4709897