Philippicae

He is protecting the interests of his buffoons and gamesters and pimps. He is protecting Capho's and Saxa's interests too, pugnacious and muscular centurions, whom he placed among his troops of male and female buffoons. Besides all this, he demands “that the decrees of himself and his colleague concerning Caesar's writings and memoranda are to stand.” Why is he so anxious that every one should have what he has bought, if he who sold it all has the price which he received for it? “And that his accounts of the money in the temple of Ops are not to be meddled with.” That is to say, that those seven hundred millions of sesterces are not to be recovered from him. “That the septemviri are to be exempt from blame or from prosecution for what they have done.” It was Nucula, I imagine, who put him in mind of that; he was afraid, perhaps, of losing so many clients. He also wishes to make stipulations in favor of “those men who are with him who may have done any thing against the laws. “He is here taking care of Mustela and Tiro; he is not anxious about himself. For what has he done? has he ever touched the public money, or murdered a man, or had armed men about him? But what reason has he for taking so much trouble about them? For he demands, “that his own judiciary law be not abrogated.” And if he obtains that, what is there that he can fear? can he be afraid that any one of his friends may be convicted by Cydas, or Lysiades, or Curius? However, he does not press us with many more demands. “I give up,” says he, “Gallia Togata; I demand Gallia Comata.”[*](The province between the Alps and the Rubicon was called Gallia Citerior, or Cisalpina, from its situation; also Togata, from the inhabitants wearing the Roman toga. The other was called Ulterior, and by Cicero often Ultima, or Transalpina; and also Comata from the fashion of the inhabitants wearing long hair.)—he evidently wishes to be quite at his ease,—“with six legions, and those made up to their full complement out of the army of Decimus Brutus;”—not only out of the troops whom he has enlisted himself; “and he is to keep possession of it as long as Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius, as consuls, or as proconsuls, keep possession of their provinces.” In the comitia held by him, his brother Caius (for it is his year) has already been repulsed. “And I myself,” says he, “am to retain possession of my province five years.” But that is expressly forbidden by the law of Caesar, and you defend the acts of Caesar.

Were you, O Lucius Piso, and you, O Lucius Philippus, you chiefs of the city, able, I will not say to endure in your minds, but even to listen with your ears to these commands of his? But, I suspect there was some alarm at work; nor, while in his power, could you feel as ambassadors, or as men of consular rank, nor could you maintain your own dignity, or that of the republic. And nevertheless somehow or other owing to some philosophy, I suppose, you did what I could not have done,—you returned without any very angry feelings, Marcus Antonius paid you no respect, though you were most illustrious men, ambassadors of the Roman people. As for us, what concessions did not we make to Cotyla the ambassador of Marcus Antonius? though it was against the law for even the gates of the city to be opened to him, yet even this temple was opened to him. He was allowed to enter the senate; here yesterday he was taking down our opinions and every word we said in his note-books; and men who had been preferred to the highest honors sold themselves to him in utter disregard of their own dignity.

O ye immortal gods! how great an enterprise is it to uphold the character of a leader in the republic; for it requires one to be influenced not merely by the thoughts but also by the eyes of the citizens. To take to one's house the ambassador of an enemy, to admit him to one's chamber, even to confer apart with him, is the act of a man who thinks nothing of his dignity, and too much of his danger. But what is danger? For if one is engaged in a contest where every thing is at stake, either liberty is assured to one if victorious, or death if defeated; the former of which alternatives is desirable, and the latter some time or other inevitable. But a base flight from death is worse than any imaginable death. For I will never be induced to believe that there are men who envy the consistency or diligence of others, and who are indignant at the unceasing desire to assist the republic being approved by the senate and people of Rome. That is what we were all bound to do; and that was not only in the time of our ancestors, but even lately, the highest praise of men of consular rank, to be vigilant, to be anxious, to be always either thinking, or doing, or saying something to promote the interests of the republic. I, O conscript fathers, recollect that Quintus Scaevola the augur, in the Marsic war, when he was a man of extreme old age, and quite broken down in constitution, every day, as soon as it was daylight, used to give every one an opportunity of consulting him; nor, throughout all that war, did any one ever see him in bed; and, though old and weak, he was the first man to come into the senate-house. I wish, above all things, that those who ought to do so would imitate his industry; and, next to that, I wish that they would not envy the exertions of another.

In truth, O conscript fathers, now we have begun to entertain hopes of liberty again, after a period of six years, during which we have been deprived of it, having endured slavery longer than prudent and industrious prisoners usually do, what watchfulness, what anxiety, what exertions ought we to shrink from, for the sake of delivering the Roman people? In truth, O conscript fathers, though men who have had the honors conferred on them that we have, usually wear their gowns, while the rest of the city is in the robe of war, still I decided that at such a momentous crisis, and when the whole republic was in so disturbed a state, we would not differ in our dress from you and the rest of the citizens. For we men of consular rank are not in this war conducting ourselves in such a manner that the Roman people will be likely to look with equanimity on the ensigns of our honor, when some of us are so cowardly as to have cast away all recollection of the kindnesses which they have received from the Roman people; some are so disaffected to the republic that they openly allege that they favor this enemy, and easily bear having our ambassadors despised and insulted by Antonius, while they wish to support the ambassador sent by Antonius. For they said that he ought not to be prevented from returning to Antonius, and they proposed an amendment to my proposition of not receiving him. Well, I will submit to them. Let Varius return to his general, but on condition that he never returns to Rome. And as to the others, if they abandon their errors, and return to their duty to the republic, I think they may he pardoned and left unpunished.

Therefore, I give my vote, “That of those men who are with Marcus Antonius, those who abandon his army, and come over either to Caius Pansa or Aulus. Hirtius the consuls; or to Decimus Brutus, imperator and consul elect; or to Caius Caesar, propraetor, before the first of March next, shall not be liable to prosecution for having been with Antonius. That, if any one of those men who are now with Antonius shall do any thing which appears entitled to honor or to reward, Caius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius the consuls, one or both of them, shall, if they think fit make a motion to the senate respecting that man's honor or reward, at the earliest opportunity. That, if, after this resolution of the senate, any one shall go to Antonius except Lucius Varius, the senate will consider that that man has acted as an enemy to the republic.”

I wish, O conscript fathers, that the immortal gods had granted to us to return thanks to Servius Sulpicius while alive, rather than thus to devise honors for him now that he is dead. Nor have I any doubt, but that if that man had been able himself to give us his report of the proceedings of his embassy, his return would have been acceptable to you and salutary to the republic. Not that either Lucius. Piso or Lucius Philippus have been deficient in either zeal or care in the performance of so important a duty and so grave a commission; but, as Servius Sulpicius was superior in age to them, and in wisdom to every one, he, being suddenly taken from the business, left the whole embassy crippled and enfeebled.

But if deserved honors have been paid to any ambassador after death, there is no one by whom they can be found to have been ever more fully deserved than by Servius Sulpicius. The rest of those men who have died while engaged on an embassy, have gone forth, subject indeed to the usual uncertainties of life, but without any especial danger or fear of death. Servius Sulpicius set out with some hope indeed of reaching Antonius, but with none of returning. But though he was so very ill that if any exertion were added to his bad state of health, he would have no hope of himself, still he did not refuse to try, even while at his last gasp, to be of some service to the republic. Therefore neither the severity of the winter, nor the snow, nor the length of the journey, nor the badness of the roads, nor his daily increasing illness, delayed him. And when he had arrived where he might meet and confer with the man to whom he had been sent, he departed this life in the midst of his care and consideration as to how he might best discharge the duty which he had undertaken.

As therefore, O Caius Pansa, you have done well in other respects, so you have acted admirably in exhorting us this day to pay honor to Servius Sulpicius, and in yourself making an eloquent oration in his praise. And after the speech which we have heard from you, I should have been content to say nothing beyond barely giving my vote, if I did not think it necessary to reply to Publius Servilius, who has declared his opinion that this honor of a statue ought to be granted to no one who has not been actually slain with a sword while performing the duties of his embassy. But I, O conscript fathers, consider that this was the feeling of our ancestors, that they considered that it was the cause of death, and not the manner of it, which was a proper subject for inquiry. In fact, they thought fit that a monument should be erected to any man whose death was caused by an embassy, in order to tempt men in perilous wars to be the more bold in undertaking the office of an ambassador. What we ought to do, therefore, is, not to scrutinize the precedents afforded by our ancestors, but to explain their intentions from which the precedents themselves arose.

Lar Tolumnius, the king of Veii, slew four ambassadors of the Roman people, at Fidenae, whose statues were standing in the rostra till within my recollection. The honor was well deserved. For our ancestors gave those men who had encountered death in the cause of the republic an imperishable memory in exchange for this transitory life. We see in the rostra the statue of Cnaeus Octavius, an illustrious and great man, the first man who brought the consulship into that family, which afterward abounded in illustrious men. There was no one then who envied him, because he was a new man; there was no one who did not honor his virtue. But yet the embassy of Octavius was one in which there was no suspicion of danger. For having been sent by the senate to investigate the dispositions of kings and of free nations, and especially to forbid the grandson of king Antiochus, the one who had carried on war against our forefathers, to maintain fleets and to keep elephants, he was slain at Laodicea, in the gymnasium, by a man of the name of Leptines. On this a statue was given to him by our ancestors as a recompense for his life, which might ennoble his progeny for many years, and which is now the only memorial left of so illustrious a family. But in his case, and in that of Tullus Cluvius,[*](There is some corruption of the text here.) and Lucius Roscius, and Spurius Antius, and Caius Fulcinius, who were slain by the king of Veii, it was not the blood that was shed at their death, but the death itself which was encountered in the service of the republic, which was the cause of their being thus honored.

Therefore, O conscript fathers, if it had been chance which had caused the death of Servius. Sulpicius, I should sorrow indeed over such a loss to the republic, but I should consider him deserving of the honor, not of a monument, but of a public mourning. But, as it is, who is there who doubts that it was the embassy itself which caused his death? For he took death away with him; though, if he had remained among us, his own care, and the attention of his most excellent son and his most faithful wife, might have warded it off. But he, as he saw that, if he did not obey your authority, he should not be acting like himself; but that if he did obey, then that duty, undertaken for the welfare of the republic, would be the end of his life; preferred dying at a most critical period of the republic, to appearing to have done less service to the republic than he might have done.

He had an opportunity of recruiting his strength and taking care of himself in many cities through which his journey lay. He was met by the liberal invitation of many entertainers, as his dignity deserved, and the men too who were sent with him exhorted him to take rest, and to think of his own health. But he, refusing all delay, hastening on, eager to perform your commands, persevered in this his constant purpose, in spite of the hindrances of his illness. And as Antonius was above all things disturbed by his arrival, because the commands which were laid upon him by your orders had been drawn up by the authority and wisdom of Servius Sulpicius, he showed plainly how he hated the senate by the evident joy which he displayed at the death of the adviser of the senate.

Leptines then did not kill Octavius, nor did the king of Veii slay those whom I have just named, more clearly than Antonius killed Servius Sulpicius. Surely he brought the man death, who was the cause of his death. Wherefore, I think it of consequence, in order that posterity may recollect it, that there should be a record of what the judgment of the senate was concerning this war. For the statue itself will be a witness that the war was so serious a one, that the death of an ambassador in it gained the honor of an imperishable memorial.