A DECLAMATION AGAINST CICERO.

FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO SALLUST.

I. I SHOULD bear your reproaches, Marcus Tullius, with concern and indignation, if I thought that you indulged in such insolence from conviction, and not from disease of mind. But perceiving in you neither moderation nor modesty, I will give you an answer, in order that, if you have received any pleasure from speaking evil of me, you may feel it diminished by hearing evil of yourself.

To whom shall I complain, or before whom shall I lament, Conscript Fathers, that our country is despoiled by different parties, and become a prey to the dishonesty of the most audacious of mankind? Shall I

1 Declamation] “In Quintilian there are two references to the Declamation (Lib. iv., c. 1, Graviter et iniquo animo, &c., and Lib. ix., c. 3, O Romule Arpinas), where it is attributed to Sallust. Hence Colomesius thought it might safely be inferred that Sallust was the author of it, though Victorius, Lipsius, Vossius, and other learned critics, had previously demonstrated that it must have been the production of any one rather than Sallust; as well as that the other Declamation, which is circulated under Cicero's name, could not have been written by Cicero. In the latter passage of Quintilian, indeed, the words O Romule Arpinas are not found in one old MS. that belonged to Almeloveen, as the celebrated Burman testifies; nor can I certainly affirm that those words were written by Sallust. Concerning the former passage, too, I have similar doubts. But perhaps some small critic (not to say the writer himself, whoever he was, with a view to add authority to his piece) may have written the words, as an example, in the margin of a MS. of Quintilian; and they may thence have crept into the text. The absence of the words from Almeloveen's MS. in the first passage, and the construction of the text in the second, make this conjecture not at all improbable. But it was a practice among rhetoricians to compose orations in the names of illustrious men, as appears from Seneca, from Quintilian, iii., 10, and from other passages. The present composition is attributed by Hadrianus Junius de Coma, c. 8, to Vibius Crispus; by Vossius to Porcius Latro. But who can possibly bring evidence to settle such a point? The reader may consult Rhenanus on the Dialog. de Orator. init., and Barthius Advers., xxiv., 5. In the recension of the text of these Declamations I have made use of five manuscripts, most of which merely give the title Sallustius in Ciceronem." Cortius. "If Cortius's conjecture, respecting the words in Quintilian's text, be incorrect, it remains only to suppose that after the work of Sallust was lost, the rhetorician, who wrote this Declamation, incorporated the words which he found in Quintilian into his own composition" Burnouf. The latter conjecture seems the more probable.

address myself to the Roman people, who are so corrupted with bribes, that they are ready to sell themselves and all that belongs to them? Or shall I plead before you, Conscript Fathers, whose authority is grown a jest to the most infamous and abandoned, and before whom Marcus Tullius defends the laws and judgments of the people, and exerts his influence with the senate, as if he were the sole remaining descendant of the illustrious Scipio Africanus, and not a person who has merely crept into the city, and been recently adopted and engrafted into it? But are your deeds, Marcus Tullius, or your words, unknown to us? Have you not lived in such a manner from your boyhood, as to think nothing that gratified another disgraceful to yourself? Did you not learn your extraordinary eloquence, under Marcus Piso, at the cost of your modesty? Doubtless; and it is by no means surprising that you display to your infamy what with infamy you acquired.

II. But, I suppose, the splendour of your affairs at home exalts your spirits; where you have a wife polluted with sacrilege and perjury, and a daughter who is a rival to her mother, and more compliant and submissive to you than she ought to be to a father. Your very home itself, thus fatal to you and yours, you secured by force and lawlessness; as if with a view to remind us how much the state is altered, when you, a most infamous character, dwell in that house which once belonged to Publius Crassus, a man of consular honours. And though these things are so, Cicero nevertheless says that he has been at the council of the immortal gods', whence he, who turns the disaster of the country to his own glory, was despatched as a guardian to our city and its inhabitants, and not under the name of executioner2; as if, forsooth, your consulship itself had not been the cause of the conspiracy, and as if the state had not then been disordered in consequence of having you for a protector. But, as I conceive, you must pride yourself still more on those measures which you adopted after your consulship, in concert with your wife Terentia, when you conducted trials at your house under the Plautian law3, condemning some of the conspirators to death, and others to pay fines; when one built you a Tusculan, another a Pompeian villa, and a third bought you a house; but he who could do nothing for you, was devoted to obloquy; he had come to attack your dwelling, or had laid a plot against the senate; and you were quite sure of his guilt. If the charges which I make are false, state what property you inherited from your father, how much

1 At the council of the immortal gods] "Because Cicero, in most of his speeches and harangues, was accustomed to say, Non humanis opibus, nec arte magistrâ ita reipublicæ consultum, sed divinâ miseratione." Badius Ascensius. 2 Name of executioner] Absque carnificis nomine. "A malicious allusion to Cicero's observation, sine cæde et sanguine rempublicam servatam." Badius Ascensius.

3 The Plautian law] See Cat., c. 31.

Tusculan-Pompeian villa] "These are so frequently mentioned in Cicero that we might reasonably abstain from making any annotation upon them; the reader may, however consult Epist. ad Att., xiii., 14, and ii. 4." Cortins

you have acquired by pleading causes, from what resources you bought your house, and reared, at such vast expense, your Tusculan and Pompeian villas.

III. But, we may suppose, a new man of Arpinum, of the breed of Caius Marius, imitates his virtue, contemns the enmity of the nobility, holds his country dear, is to be influenced neither by intimidation nor by interest; such would be his love for the state, and such his virtuous magnanimity1. On the contrary, he is a man of the lightest character, suppliant to his enemies, insolent to his friends; a follower sometimes of one party and sometimes of another, and faithful to none; an unstable senator, a mercenary patron; a person whose every member is polluted with turpitude, whose tongue is false, whose hands are rapacious, whose feet are fugitive, and what cannot decently be named, the most dishonoured of all. Yet he, a person of this description, dares to exclaim,

O fortunatam2 natam, me consule, Romam!

Rome fortunate under your consulship, Cicero? Nay, indeed, most unfortunate and wretched, suffering a most cruel proscription of her citizens, when you, in the disturbed condition of the state, compelled all the respectable classes to shrink before your severity; when all causes, and all laws, were under your control, and when, having set aside the Porcian law, and despoiled us of our liberty, you took the power of life and death, over every one of us, into your own hands. Nor are you content to have done this with impunity; you who reproach us by reminding us of it; nor are we allowed to forget our slavish submission. But let it suffice, I intreat you, Cicero, that you have effected and accomplished what you pleased; it is sufficient that we have endured it; would you, in addition, burden our ears with the odious repetition of your deeds, and harass them with those most offensive words,

Cedant arma toga, concedat laurea linguæ3?

As if you had perpetrated the deeds of which you boast with the aid of the toga, and not with arms, or as if there were any difference between you and Sylla the dictator, except in your title of authority.

But why should I expose your presumption, when you yourself pretend that Minerva has taught you all arts, and when the good and great Jupiter has admitted you to the council of the gods, and Italy brought you back from exile on her shoulders? Let me ask you, Romulus of Arpinum, who, in your extraordinary merit, have sur

1 Such his love-virtuous magnanimity] Illud vero amicitiæ tantum ac virtutis est animi. These words are evidently corrupt, as Glareanus and Cortius observe. I have given them such a sense as the passage seems to require. 20 fortunatam, &c.] See Juv., X., 122; Quintil., xi., 1.

3 Laurea lingua] "In Cic. Off., i., 22, the verse is read laurea laudi, which the critics prefer, though some contend for linguæ. See the Commentators on that passage, and Burman on Quintil., xi., 1." Cortius.

Romulus] "He calls him a Romulus, as if he were the author of a nev state of things." Cortius.

passed all the Paulli, Fabii, and Scipios, what place you hold in the state, what party in the republic suits you? Whom do you choose as a friend, whom as an enemy? Him, for whom you laid a plot in the state, you now serve; (with what justice', when you returned from your exile at Dyrrachium, did you follow him?) of those whom you called tyrants, you now support the power; those whom you thought men of honour, you now call fools and madmen. You plead the cause of Vatinius; you have a bad opinion of Sextius; you assail Bibulus with the most insolent language; you extol Cæsar; whomsoever you hated most, to him you are the most submissive; you have one opinion, on political affairs, when you are standing, and another when you are sitting; some you slander, and others you hate; and, O most fickle of renegades, you are trusted neither by one party nor by the other.

1 With what justice, &c.] "I have included these words in a parenthesis, to give a little help to the sentence, the meaning of which, in the common editions, it is difficult to unravel. *** Cicero, in his exile, resided at Dyrrachium, both for the sake of safety, and of easily hearing news from Rome. See Ep. xiv., 1, iii., 8. Before he went into exile, he was offered a legation by Cæsar, which he declined; but after his return, he was among Cæsar's followers." Cortius.

A DECLAMATION AGAINST SALLUST.

FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO CICERO1.

I. Ir is your great pleasure, Sallust, to lead a life suitable and correspondent to your words, and to utter nothing, of however foul a character, to which your conduct, even from your earliest boyhood, has not been answerable; so that your language is uniformly consistent with your morals. For neither can any one, who lives like you, speak otherwise than you speak; nor can the life of any one, whose conversation is so impure, be more honourable than your own.

In what direction shall I turn my thoughts, Conscript Fathers; and with what shall I commence? The better each of us is known, the heavier is the task which I undertake in addressing you. Should I answer this calumniator with regard to my own life and actions, envy will still follow my glory; and, if I expose his actions, habits, and whole course of conduct, I shall fall into the same fault of shamelessness which I object to him. If, therefore, you are at all offended, you ought to express displeasure at him, who commenced the subject, rather than at myself. It shall be my care to defend myself with the least possible offensiveness of language, and to make it appear that I advance nothing false against my opponent.

I am aware that, in replying, I have no great expectation of securing your attention, for you are certain that you will hear no new charges against Sallust, but will merely recognise old accusations, with which your ears and mine, as well as his own, have long tingled. But you have, on this account, the greater reason to detest the man; a man who, not even at his entrance on vice, contented himself with essays in small matters, but commenced his course in such a way that he could neither be surpassed by any one, or surpass himself during the rest of his life. He indeed aims at nothing else, but, like a filthy swine, to wallow with any one whatsoever. But he is greatly deceived if he thinks that he shall palliate his conduct by his charges against myself; for infamy of life is not to be effaced by impudence of tongue; and there is a certain feeling of abhorrence, of which every one is sensible from the prompting of his own mind, against him who throws out false aspersions on respectable characters. If, therefore, the acts of his life defy recollection, you must form your estimate of it, Conscript Fathers, not from his speeches, but from his habits. I will endeavour, as far as I can, to despatch my account of him with brevity. Nor

1 Cicero] Glareanus observes that there is an imitation of Cicero's copiousness style in this Declamation; as there is of Sallust's brevity in the preceding.