Dio's Rome, Volume 3. Cassius Dio Cocceianus
gifts from him he was then required under compulsion to surrender the price of them, and the second, that he inherited naught from his father, spent all that he had like Charybdis (the speaker is always bringing in some comparison from Sicily, as if we had forgotten that he had been exiled there), and paid the price of all that he purchased.
[-15-] "So in these charges this remarkable orator is convicted of violently contradicting himself and, by Jupiter, again in the following statements. At one time he says that Antony took part in everything that was done by Caesar and by this means became more than any one else responsible for all our internal evils, and again he charges him with cowardice, reproaching him with not having shared in any other exploits than those performed in Thessaly. And he makes a complaint against him to the effect that he restored some of the exiles and finds fault with him because he did not secure the recall of his uncle; as if any one believes that he would not have restored him first of all, if he had been able to recall whomsoever he pleased, since there was no grievance on either side between them, as this speaker himself knows. Indeed, though he told many wretched lies about Antony, he did not dare to say anything of that kind. But he is utterly reckless about letting slip anything that comes to his tongue's end, as if it were mere breath.
[-16-] "Why should one follow this line of refutation further? Turning now to the fact that he goes about with such a tragic air, and has but this moment said in the course of his remarks that Antony rendered the sight of the master of the horse most oppressive by using everywhere and under all circumstances the sword, the purple, the lictors, and the soldiers at once, let him tell me clearly how and in what respect we have been wronged by this. He will have no statement to make; for if he had had, he would have sputtered it out before anything else. Quite the reverse of his charge is true. Those who were quarreling at that time and causing all the trouble were Trebellius and Dolabella: Antony did no wrong and was active in every way in our behalf, so much so that he was entrusted by us with guarding the city against those very men, and not only did this remarkable orator not oppose it (he was there) but even approved it. Else let him show what syllable he uttered on seeing the licentious and accursed fellow (to quote from his abuse), besides doing nothing that the occasion required, securing also so great authority from you. He will have nothing to show. So it looks as if not a word of what he now shouts aloud was ventured at that time by this great and patriotic orator, who is everywhere and always saying and repeating: 'I alone am contending for freedom, I alone speak freely for the democracy; I cannot be restrained by favor of friends or fear of enemies from looking out for your advantage; I, even if it should be my lot to die in speaking in your behalf, will perish very gladly.' And his silence was very natural, for it occurred to him to reflect that Antony possessed the lictors and the purple-bordered vesture in accordance with the customs of our ancestors in regard to masters of horse, and that he was using the sword and the soldiers perforce against the rebels. For what most excessive outrages would they not have committed but for his being hedged about with these protections, when some of them so despised him as it was?
[-17-] "That these and all his other acts were correct and most thoroughly in accord with Caesar's intention the facts themselves show. The rebellion went no further, and Antony, far from paying a penalty for his course, was subsequently appointed consul. Notice, I beg of you, how he administered this office of his. You will find, if you scrutinize the matter minutely, that its tenure proved of great value to the city. His traducer, knowing this, could not endure his jealousy but dared to slander him for those deeds which he would have longed to do himself. That is why he introduced the matter of his stripping and anointing and those ancient fables, not because there was any pertinence in them now, but in order to obscure by external noise his opponent's consummate skill and success. Yet this same Antony, O thou earth, and ye gods (I shall call louder than you and invoke them with greater justice), saw that the city was already in reality under a tyranny through the fact that all the legions obeyed Caesar and all the people together with the senate submitted to him to such an extent that they voted among other measures that he should be dictator for life and use the appurtenances of a king. Then he showed Caesar his error most convincingly and restrained him most prudently, until the latter, abashed and afraid, would not accept either the name of king or the diadem, which he had in mind to bestow upon himself even against our will. Any other man would have declared that he had been ordered to do it by his master, and putting forward the compulsion as an excuse would have obtained pardon for it,—yes, indeed, he would, when you think of what kind of votes we had passed at that time and what power the soldiers had secured. Antony, however, because he was thoroughly acquainted with Caesar's disposition and accurately aware of all he was preparing to do, by great good judgment succeeded in turning him aside from his course and retarding his ambitions. The proof of it is that afterward he no longer behaved in any way like a monarch, but mingled publicly and unprotected with us all; and that accounts most of all for the possibility of his meeting the fate that he did.
[-18-] "This is what was done, O Cicero or Cicerulus or Ciceracius or Ciceriscus or Graeculus17 or whatever you like to be called, by the uneducated, the naked, the anointed man: and none of it was done by you, the clever, the wise, the user of much more olive oil than wine, you who let your clothing drag about your ankles not, by Jupiter, as the dancers do, who teach you intricacies of reasoning by their poses, but in order to hide the ugliness of your legs. Oh no, it's not through modesty that you do this, you who delivered that long screed about Antony's habits. Who is there that does not see these soft clothes of yours? Who does not scent your carefully combed gray locks? Who is there unaware that you put away your first wife who had borne you two children, and at an advanced age married another, a mere girl, in order that you might pay your debts out of her property? And you did not even retain her, to the end that you might keep Caerellia fearlessly, whom you debauched when she was as much older than yourself as the maiden you married was younger, and to whom you write such letters as a jester at no loss for words would write if he were trying to get up an amour with a woman seventy years old. This, which is not altogether to my taste, I have been induced to say, Conscript Fathers, in the hope that he should not go away without getting as good as he sent in the discussion. Again, he has ventured to reproach Antony for a little kind of banquet, because he, as he says, drinks water, his purpose being to sit up at night and compose speeches against us,—though he brings up his son in such drunkenness that the latter is sober neither night nor day. Furthermore he undertook to make derogatory remarks about Antony's mouth, this man who has shown so great licentiousness and impurity throughout his entire life that he would not keep his hands off even his closest kin, but let out his wife for hire and deflowered his daughter.
[-18-] "These particulars I shall leave as they stand and return to the point where I started. That Antony against whom he has inveighed, seeing Caesar exalted over our government, caused him by granting what seemed personal favors to a friend not to put into effect any of the projects that he had in mind. Nothing so diverts persons from objects which they may attain without caring to secure them righteously, as for those who fear such results to appear to endure the former's conduct willingly. These persons in authority have no regard for their own consciousness of guilt, but if they think they have been detected, they are ashamed and afraid: thereafter they usually take what is said to them as flattery and believe the opposite, and any action which may result from the words as a plot, being suspicious in the midst of their shame. Antony knew this thoroughly, and first of all he selected the Lupercalia and that procession in order that Caesar in the relaxation of his spirit and the fun of the affair might be rebuked with immunity, and next he selected the Forum and the rostra that his patron might be shamed by the very places. And he fabricated the commands from the populace, in order that hearing them Caesar might reflect not on what Antony was saying at the time, but on what the Roman people would order a man to say. How could he have believed that this injunction had really been laid upon any one, when he knew that the people had not voted anything of the kind and did not hear them shouting out. But it was right for him to hear this in the Roman Forum, where we had often joined in many deliberations for freedom, and beside the rostra from which we had sent forth thousands and thousands of measures in behalf of the democracy, and at the festival of the Lupercalia, in order that he should remember Romulus, and from the mouth of the consul that he might call to mind the deeds of the early consuls, and in the name of the people, that he might ponder the fact that he was undertaking to be tyrant not over Africans or Gauls or Egyptians, but over very Romans. These
Various diminutive endings, expressing contempt.