the former cast himself with his armor into the flood. It would be
fitting--would it not?--to set up also a statue of this consul, so that
people might contrast the one man armed in the Tiber and the other naked
in the Forum. It was by such conduct as has been cited that those heroes
of yore were wont to preserve us and give us liberty, while he took away
all our liberty from us, so far as was in his power, destroyed the whole
democracy, set up a despot in place of a consul, a tyrant in place of
a dictator over us. You remember the nature of his language when he
approached the rostra, and the style of his behavior when he had ascended
it. But when a man who is a Roman and a consul has dared to name any one
King of the Romans in the Roman Forum, close to the rostra of liberty, in
the presence of the entire people and the entire senate, and straightway
to set the diadem upon his head and further to affirm falsely in the
hearing of us all that we ourselves bade him say and do this, what most
outrageous deed will that man not dare, and from what action, however
revolting, will he refrain? [-32-] Did we lay this injunction upon you,
Antony, we who expelled the Tarquins, who cherished Brutus, who hurled
Capitolinus headlong, who put to death the Spurii?[12] Did we order you
to salute any one as king, when we have laid a curse upon the very name
of monarch and furthermore upon that of dictator as the most similar? Did
we command you to appoint any one tyrant, we who repulsed Pyrrhus from
Italy, who drove back Antiochus beyond the Taurus, who put an end to the
tyranny even in Macedonia? No, by the rods of Valerius and the law of
Porcius, no, by the leg of Horatius and the hand of Mucius, no, by the
spear of Decius and the sword of Brutus! But you, unspeakable villain,
begged and pleaded to be made a slave as Postumius pleaded to be
delivered to the Samnites, as Regulus to be given back to the
Carthaginians, as Curtius to be thrown into the chasm. And where did
you find this recorded? In the same place where you discovered that the
Cretans had been made free after Brutus was their governor, when we voted