Both
had been named to the government of important provinces; and, if authority
was not to be brought into contempt, they deserved at least a show of
outward respect. Cicero lived to desire their friendship, to affect a
value for them, and to regret his violence; but they had consented to his
exile; and careless of decency, and oblivious of the chances of the
future, he used his opportunity to burst out upon them in language in
which the foulest ruffian in the streets would have scarcely spoken of the
first magistrates of the Republic. Piso and Gabinius, he said, were
thieves, not consuls. They had been friends of Catiline, and had been
enemies to himself, because he had baffled the conspiracy. Piso could not
pardon the death of Cethegus. Gabinius regretted in Catiline himself the
loss of his lover.[7] Gabinius, he said, had been licentious in his
youth; he had ruined his fortune; he had supplied his extravagance by
pimping; and had escaped his creditors only by becoming tribune. "Behold
him," Cicero said, "as he appeared when consul at a meeting called by the
arch-thief Clodius, full of wine, and sleep, and fornication, his hair
moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid, and declaring, with a voice
thick with drink, that he disapproved of putting citizens to death without
trial." [8] As to Piso, his best recommendation was a cunning gravity of
demeanor, concealing mere vacuity.
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