Again and again he
returned upon them railing like a fishwife. In his oration for Sextius
he scoffed at Gabinius's pomatum and curled hair, and taunted him with
unmentionable sins; but he specially entertained himself with his
description of Piso:
"For Piso!" he said: "O gods, how unwashed, how stern he looked--a
pillar of antiquity, like one of the old bearded consuls; his dress
plain plebeian purple, his hair tangled, his brow a very pledge for
the Commonwealth! Such solemnity in his eye, such wrinkling of his
forehead, that you would have said the State was resting on his head
like the sky on Atlas. Here we thought we had a refuge. Here was the
man to oppose the filth of Gabinius; his very face would be enough.
People congratulated us on having one friend to save us from the
tribune. Alas! I was deceived," etc. etc.
Piso afterward called Cicero to account in the Senate, and brought out
a still more choice explosion of invectives. Beast, filth, polluted
monster, and such like, were the lightest of the names which Cicero
hurled back at one of the oldest members of the Roman aristocracy. A
single specimen may serve to illustrate the cataract of nastiness
which he poured alike on Piso and Clodius and Gabinius: "When all the
good were hiding themselves in tears," he said to Piso, "when the
temples were groaning and the very houses in the city were mourning
(over my exile), you, heartless madman that you are, took up the cause
of that pernicious animal, that clotted mass of incests and civil
blood, of villanies intended and impurity of crimes committed[he was
alluding to Clodius, who was in the Senate probably listening to him].
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