Need I speak of your feasting, your laughter, and handshakings--your
drunken orgies with the filthy companions of your potations? Who in
those days saw you ever sober, or doing anything that a citizen need
not be ashamed of? While your colleague's house was sounding with
songs and cymbals, and he himself was dancing naked at a supper-party
["cumque ipse nudus in convivio saltaret,"] you, you coarse glutton,
with less taste for music, were lying in a stew of Greek boys and wine
in a feast of the Centaurs and Lapithae, where one cannot say whether
you drank most, or vomited most, or spilt most."--_In L.
Pisonem_,10. The manners of the times do not excuse language of
this kind, for there was probably not another member of the Senate
who indulged in it. If Cicero was disliked and despised, he had his
own tongue to thank for it.
[10] _To Atticus_, iv. 2.
[11] _To Atticus_, iv. 3.
[12] For the details of this story see Dion Cassius, lib. xxxix. capp.
12-16. Compare _Cicero ad Familiares_, lib. i. Epist. 1-2.
Curious subterranean influences seem to have been at work to save the
Senate from the infamy of restoring Ptolemy. Verses were discovered in
the Sibylline Books directing that if an Egyptian king came to Rome as
a suppliant, he was to be entertained hospitably, but was to have no
active help.
Pages:
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360