citizen of singular virtue, so nearly related to you, abstain from
ever consulting him on the affairs of the republic, and consult men
who have no property whatever of their own, and are draining yours?

VII. Yes, your consulship, forsooth, is a salutary one for the state,
mine a mischievous one. Have you so entirely lost all shame as well
as all chastity, that you could venture to say this in that temple
in which I was consulting that senate which formerly in the full
enjoyment of its honours presided over the world? And did you place
around it abandoned men armed with swords? But you have dared besides
(what is there which you would not dare?) to say that the Capitoline
Hill, when I was consul, was full of armed slaves. I was offering
violence to the senate, I suppose, in order to compel the adoption of
those infamous decrees of the senate. O wretched man, whether those
things are not known to you, (for you know nothing that is good,) or
whether they are, when you dare to speak so shamelessly before such
men! For what Roman knight was there, what youth of noble birth except
you, what man of any rank or class who recollected that he was a
citizen, who was not on the Capitoline Hill while the senate was
assembled in this temple? who was there, who did not give in his name?
Although there could not be provided checks enough, nor were the books
able to contain their names.

In truth, when wicked men, being compelled by the revelations of the
accomplices, by their own handwriting, and by what I may almost call
the voices of their letters, were confessing that they had planned the
parricidal destruction of their country, and that they had agreed
to burn the city, to massacre the citizens, to devastate Italy, to
destroy the republic; who could have existed without being roused to
defend the common safety? especially when the senate and people of