Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Domo Sua/ In His House, 57BCE

History’s Great Speeches

Members of the pontifical college: among the many divinely-inspired expedients of government established by our ancestors, there is none more striking than that whereby they expressed their intention that the worship of the gods and the vital interests of the state should be entrusted to the direction of the same individuals, to the end that citizens of the highest distinction and the brightest fame might achieve the welfare of religion by a wise administration of the state, and of the state by a sage interpretation of religion. And if, on any occasion in the past, a case of high importance has been submitted to the discretion and arbitrament of the priests of the Roman people, surely the importance of the case now before you justifies the belief that to the wisdom and impartiality of your decision the whole prestige of the state, the wellbeing of all her citizens, their lives, their liberty, their altars, their hearths, their household gods, their property, their fortunes, and their dwellings, are unreservedly entrusted. You on this day are called upon to decide whether from this time forward you desire that mad and unprincipled magistrates should be stripped of the protection afforded them by wicked and dastardly citizens, or actually armed with the awful sanction of the immortal gods. For if that plague-spot and devouring flame of the republic should succeed in defending by means of divine religion his iniquitous and ruinous tribunate, which he can defend on no ground of human justice, then we shall have to look around for a new ritual, new mediators between ourselves and the power of heaven, and new interpreters of the divine will. But if, on the other hand, your authority and wisdom is applied to the cancelling of what the madness of villains has achieved, now in the crushing of constitutional government, now in its desertion, and now in its betrayal, then we shall have good reason to give well-deserved approbation to the prudence of our ancestors in electing to the priestly offices the men of highest distinction. But since that madman has thought that by pouring abuse upon all political courses recently advocated by me in the senate he could win some access to your ears, I shall depart in my speech from a natural arrangement; and shall reply, I will not say to the speech of my infuriated opponent, for a speech is beyond his capacity, but to his scurrility, his practice in which has been reinforced not only by an intolerable impudence, but also by a long-continued impunity.

And first I ask you, Clodius, infatuate lunatic that you are, what Nemesis of your crimes and enormities is it which is so powerfully deluding you to believe that upright men such as these, who bear up the state not merely by their wise deliberations, but by the very impressiveness of their external majesty, are incensed with me, because in a statement of my opinion I identified the welfare of the state with the bestowal of honour upon Gnaeus Pompeius, and that they are likely to hold at this time views on essential matters of religion different from those which they held in my absence? "At that time," he says, "you held a commanding position in the eyes of the pontiffs; but now that you have passed to the popular side, you must be held to have degraded yourself." Is it indeed so? Would you wrest from their proper dwelling those qualities which are the besetting sins of the ignorant mob, fickleness, I mean, and inconstancy, and a mind mutable as the weather, and would you attach them to men whose high seriousness bids them shrink from inconstancy, and who are deterred from capricious changes of view by the strict and precise ordinances of religion, by the precept of history, and by the study of approved literary record? "Are you the man," so my opponent addresses me, "indispensable to the senate, mourned by patriots, yearned for by the republic, whose restoration we thought would mean the restoration of senatorial authority, and yet whose first act on your return was to betray it? " I defer the treatment of my own expressed opinion until I have replied to your impudent assertions.

Was this then, O fatal scourge of the state, was this the citizen whose retirement from his home and his country, to prevent an armed conflict between patriots and traitors, you endeavoured to procure by the power of the sword, by the menace of an army, by the guilt of the consuls, by the threats of desperadoes, by a levy of slaves, by a blockade of the temples, by a seizure of the forum, and by the stifling of the senate, and yet whom you yourself avow to have been longed for, summoned, and recalled for the preservation of the state by the senate, by all men of sound views, and by an united Italy? "But," you object, "you did wrong in coming to the senate assembled on the Capitol on that day of riot." .No, I reply, so far was I from attending the senate, that I shut myself up at home while the period of turbulence lasted, when it was a matter of general knowledge that the slaves, whom you had for a long time past equipped for the murder of patriots, had come armed with you to the Capitol, in company with your infamous crew of rascals and fellow-criminals. I do not mind telling you that on receipt of this news I remained at home instead of giving you and your gladiators a chance of reopening the slaughter. But when I was informed that the Roman people had been induced by their fears and by the scarcity of provisions to gather on the Capitol, while your instruments in crime had either lost their swords or been robbed of them, and had scattered in a panic, I came, with no forces and no armed retinue, but with a mere handful of friends. Would you have me refuse to come, when I was being summoned to the senate by the consul Publius Lentulus, who had done signal service to myself and to the state, and by Quintus Metellus, who, though he was my opponent and your cousin, had postponed our differences and your prayers to the claims of my safety and dignity, and when so vast a throng of citizens were calling upon me by name to express my gratitude for the favour they had but recently conferred upon me, and when, above all, it was ascertained that you had taken yourself off with your band of renegades? Have you the effrontery to apply in this place the term "enemy of the Capitol" to me, who was the guardian and defender of the Capitol and all the temples, because I came to the Capitol when two consuls were holding a meeting of the senate there? Are there certain conjunctures when it is a misdemeanour to attend the senate, or did the nature of the matter under debate make it incumbent upon me to repudiate the matter and censure the debaters?

I assert, in the first place, that it is always the duty of a conscientious senator to attend the senate, nor do I hold with those who elect not to attend the senate in person when times are adverse, failing to realise that by their ill-considered obstinacy they do but play into the hands of those whose purpose they desire to baulk. But, it may be urged, members have often held aloof from attendance through apprehension, and a feeling that their presence in the senate was not compatible with safety. I pass no censure upon such, nor do I inquire into the reality of their fears. I hold that no man can dictate to another when he shall or shall not feel fear. Do you ask the reason for my own fearlessness? It was because it was known that you had left the scene. There were several good citizens who held that they could not safely appear in the senate; why then could I not hold the same view? Why did they remain, when I personally had made up my mind that continued existence as a citizen was absolutely unsafe for me? Are others permitted, and rightly permitted, to find no cause for personal apprehension in what brings fear to me, and am I alone to be compelled to fear vicariously for others as well as individually for myself?

Again, if in the statement of my opinion I included no condemnation of the two consuls, am I for that reason deserving of censure? Was it for me to select as objects of my strictures those statesmen whose measure had saved me, unsentenced as I was, and a benefactor of the state, from undergoing a penalty that attaches only to condemned criminals? The marvellous zeal they displayed for my preservation made it incumbent not only upon me but upon all patriots to bear with their shortcomings, and was I of all men, who owed to them my restoration to my old proud position, to lend the weight of my counsel to the repudiation of their salutary policy? But what was the opinion which I did express? It was, in the first place, the opinion which popular discussion had for long past embedded in our minds; in the second place, it was the opinion which had been weighed in the senate during the previous days; and, in the third place, it was the opinion which a full meeting of the senate had adopted at the time when it expressed itself in agreement with me. Consequently, the matter which I introduced was neither unforeseen nor novel, and if the pronouncement was at fault, it is the fault rather of him who gave it expression than of all those who gave it their approbation. It may be objected that the freedom of the senate's judgement was hampered by intimidation; but if you represent that those who had retired from the scene of action were actuated by fear, at least grant that fear had no influence with those who stood their ground. But if no freedom of vote was possible without those who were at the time absent, I would point out that the motion for the introduction of a formal resolution was only made when all were present; and it was the whole senate that obstinately demanded it. But since I am its originator and author, what ground of censure, I ask, can be found in the actual pronouncement? Was the occasion not such as to justify our embarking upon a new policy? Was my rôle upon that occasion not that of a protagonist? Or ought we to have looked rather to another quarter for safety? What more justifying occasion could there have been than a famine, than faction, than the projects of you and your adherents, who thought that now that an opportunity was offered to you of inflaming the minds of the ignorant mob, you might make the price of grain a pretext for renewing the robbery which spelt ruin for them? The reason for the famine was partly that the corn-growing provinces had no corn; partly that it had been exported to other countries, the demands of the dealers being, as we are asked to believe, extortionate; partly that it was being kept stored in custody, in order that its alleviating effect in the actual throes of famine might be more gratifying; it was to be produced as an unlooked-for surprise. The situation did not repose on vague rumour, but on a very present and palpable danger; it existed, not in conjectural prophecy, but within our own actual range of vision and experience. When prices were rising so steadily, that we began to fear not mere dearness but actual destitution and famine, the mob flocked to the temple of Concord, whither the consul Metellus was summoning the senate. If this was a genuine result of resentment at the famine, at least the consuls could have taken the matter up, at least the senate could have initiated some measures. But if it was occasioned by the price of corn, and if it was you who were the goad and the instigator of agitation, was it not right that we should all make it our object to remove from you all that might act as fuel to your recklessness? If, again, both of these combined were the cause, and if, when men were already goaded by the pangs of hunger, you were found to make the ulcer swell, did not this call for a yet more drastic remedy, calculated to heal the innate as well as the adventitious disease? This, then, was the situation, - high prices in the present and the prospect of famine in the immediate future; then, as though these were not sufficient evil, stone-throwing began. If this was a mere spontaneous expression of popular indignation, it would be bad enough; if it was instigated by Publius Clodius, it would be no greater crime than what experience has led us to expect from a mischievous character; but if both influences were present, if the occasion was such as naturally to stir the animosity of the mob, and if at the same time ring-leaders of sedition were waiting armed for their opportunity, do you not think that the very voice of the state implored the aid of the consul and the protection of the senate? As a matter of fact, it is obvious that both causes were responsible: the oppressive prices of grain and the great scarcity of provisions, which made men apprehensive not merely now of a long period of dearness, but of absolute famine, are denied by none; and that this was the pretext for pursuing his incendiarism, murder, and rapine which that enemy of peace and tranquillity was ready to grasp at, I would not have you, gentlemen, even suspect, unless you shall see it with your eyes. Who are the men whom the consul Quintus Metellus, your cousin, publicly named in the senate as having stoned, and even stabbed him? Lucius Sergius and Marcus Lollius. Who is this Lollius? He is a man who, not even now as he sits among you, is without his weapon, and who, when you were tribune of the plebs (I waive my own position), demanded the surrender of Gnaeus Pompeius for execution. Who is Sergius? The squire of Catiline, the bodyguard of yourself, the standard-bearer of civil strife, the rallying-point of the shopkeepers; he is a convicted law-breaker, an assassin, a stoner, a pillager of the forum, a blockader of the senate-house. Seeing that it was with these men and such as these as your lieutenants that, at a time of high prices, you were plotting a sudden onset upon the consuls, the senate, and the property and fortunes of the rich, alleging as a pretext the cause of the destitute and the ignorant, seeing that tranquillity offered you no loophole of safety, and seeing that you, with your desperate subordinates, had at your back armies of rascals whom you had already told off to their several functions, was it not the duty of the senate to take measures to prevent your laying the torch of ruin to all that fuel that stood ready to burst into the flames of civil strife.

The occasion, then, was such as to justify a new policy: consider now whether mine was not the rôle almost of a protagonist. In connexion with the incident of the stone-throwing, whose name was mentioned by your minion Sergius, or by Lollius, or by those other scourges? Who did they say should make himself responsible for the price of grain? Was it not myself? Again, was it not from me that your nocturnal troupe of partisans (personally coached by yourself) demanded corn? As if I, forsooth, had been placed in charge of supplies, or had made a corner in wheat, or had any authority at all in that direction by any powers either of control or of jurisdiction. And yet, with his whole mind bent on slaughter, he had proclaimed my name to his partisans, and openly hinted it to the ignorant mob. When a crowded senate, with his voice alone opposing, had passed in the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest a decree for the restoration of my position, suddenly upon that very day the extreme expensiveness of corn gave way to an unexpected cheapness. Some asserted (and I agree with them) that the immortal gods had given a clear intimation of their approval of my restoration, while there were many who applied to the result an inferential train of reasoning as follows: since, they argued, all hope of peace and tranquillity lay in my return, whereas my departure had meant a daily apprehension of turmoil, it was the almost total vanishing of the fear of war which was responsible for the change in prices; and since on my return they had again become more oppressive, it was to me, whose arrival loyal citizens had constantly asserted would produce cheapness, that they appealed to influence them. The upshot of the matter is, that it was not merely your partisans who, acting on your suggestion, named me, but, after the defeat and scattering of your forces, it was the whole Roman people, who had gathered to the Capitol, who, since on that day I was in poor health, expressly demanded my presence in the senate. My arrival was eagerly anticipated; and after several speeches had been made I was called upon to speak. The policy which I proposed was one that was highly salutary to the state and most necessary for myself. I was asked to procure plentiful supplies of corn, and a decrease in its price; but whether I had any powers in the matter or not was never taken into account. I was besieged by the urgent complaints of patriots; but it was the sarcasms of the disloyal that I found hard to bear. I entrusted the settlement of the demand to a friend who was wealthier than myself, not from a desire to shelve the responsibility upon one who had deserved so well of me, - rather would I have sunk beneath the burden myself, - but because I saw that Gnaeus Pompeius, by his loyalty, wisdom, courage, influence, and, last but not least, by his proverbial felicity, would realise with the greatest ease the hopes which we and all had reposed in him. So, whether it be a happy result of my return bestowed by the immortal gods upon the Roman people, that even as at my retirement scarcity of provisions, famine, devastation, slaughter, conflagrations, robberies, impunity for criminals, exile, terror, and faction were rife, so on my return fertility, plenty, hope of tranquillity, security of mind, justice, constitutional government, popular concord, and senatorial authority seemed to be reinstalled with me; or whether I personally on my arrival was in duty bound to devote all my ingenuity, influence, and energy to securing some requital for the Roman people for all their kindness; whichever be the case, I do now guarantee, promise, and vow - I make no larger assertion, I assert only what is enough for the present time - that, so far as concerns the price of grain, the state will never arrive at that crisis to which it appeared to be tending.

Is it then in respect of this service, for which I was primarily responsible, that fault is found with that declaration of my policy? That the task was one of supreme importance and of supreme peril, not only by reason of the actual famine, but also by reason of the workers of murder, arson, and spoliation, is denied by none, since to the factors that produced the high prices was added that keen observer of the universal distress, who never failed to kindle the torches of his wickedness at the miseries of the state. He denies the propriety of decreeing any extraordinary function to an individual. I will not answer this plea of yours as I would if any other were the pleader; I will not point out that the extraordinary commissions on land and sea which have been entrusted to Gnaeus Pompeius surpass all others in number, in hazardousness, and in importance, and that if anyone regrets these commissions he regrets the success of the Roman people.

I do not use this argument with you, though it is a line that I can well adopt in my speech to gentlemen here who oppose the bestowal of extraordinary commissions upon any one, though they allow that if any special position must be conferred upon an individual, Gnaeus Pompeius is the man upon whom above all they would confer it, and state that it is a principle of action with them, since the commission has been given to Pompeius, to lend it a dignity and a support which are demanded by the merits of its holder. The opinions of these men I am prevented from approving owing to the triumphs of Gnaeus Pompeius, by which that great man, summoned by an extraordinary mandate to the defence of his country, added lustre to the name and honour to the empire of the Roman people; though I do approve their consistency, a consistency of which I too have been called upon to avail myself, and which enabled our great general to carry out the extraordinary command which was given to him in the war against Mithridates and Tigranes. With these I have at all events some common ground whereon to dispute; but what impudence can rival yours when you dare to assert that no extraordinary powers should be given to anyone? You, by an iniquitous law, holding no inquiry, and involving the Roman people in your criminal act, outlawed Ptolemy, the king of Cyprus, who was brother to the king of Alexandria, and who held his kingdom upon a title equally good; you inflicted the patronage of this empire upon the realm, the property, and the fortunes of one with whose father, grandfather, and ancestors we had been on terms of alliance and friendship; and after all this, you gave to Marcus Cato supervision of the removal of his money, and the management of the war against him, should he defend his rights. "Ah!" you will say, "but what a magnificent man! The soul of uprightness, of sagacity, of fortitude, and of patriotism, whose virtues, principles, and whole philosophy of life give him a surpassing and almost unique title to fame!" I grant it, but where is the relevancy of all this, since you assert, as you do, that it is wrong for any extraordinary public command to be given to any one? But in this act it is only your inconsistency of which I disapprove; by express nomination you, in your proposal, conferred an extraordinary distinction and command upon him whom you desired, not by so doing to promote to the position which his merits deserved, but to put out of the way, in order to give you a free hand for your misdeeds, him whom you had exposed to the attacks of your partisans of the type of Sergius, Lollius, and Titius, and your other princes of fire and slaughter, him who, as you asserted, had been an executioner of citizens, an instigator to the death of men against whom no verdict had been passed, and a supporter of cruelty. And so devoid of self-control were you, that you were unable to conceal your criminal methods. At a mass meeting you recited a letter which you said had been sent to you by Caesar. The letter opened "my dear Pulcher," and you even adduced as a proof of his affection the fact that he employed your surname only, without the addition of "proconsul" or "tribune of the plebs." There followed, so you pretend, congratulations on your having disencumbered your tribunate of Marcus Cato, and on having deprived him for the future of all opportunity of speaking his mind on the subject of extraordinary commands. Either Caesar never sent you this letter, or, if he did send it, he did not wish it to be recited at a mass meeting. But whether he sent it or whether it is a mere fiction of your own, the fact remains that your recitation of it was a revelation of your motive in so distinguishing Cato. But I will deal no further with Cato; for his splendid qualities, his great merits, and the loyalty and self-control with which he executed his commission, seemed to cast into the shade the unscrupulousness of your measure and of your policy. But what follows? Who ever committed the rich and fertile province of Syria, the administration of a war with peaceable tribes, the funds which he stole, though they had been set apart for the purchase of holdings in accordance with the measures of his friend Caesar, and an unlimited command, to the man who was of all men ever born the most vile, the most wicked, the most polluted? It was to such an one that you first assigned Cilicia; then you altered your bargain, and transferred Cilicia, again by an extraordinary bestowal, upon a praetor; while to Gabinius you gave, at an enhanced price, Syria by express nomination. Again, did you not expressly surrender free peoples bound hand and foot, though they had been given their liberty by many decrees of the senate and also by a recent measure of his own son-in-law, to Lucius Piso, the most savage, cruel, and hypocritical of men, who was deeply branded with the stains of all manner of wickedness and lust? And though he had already paid you full wage for services rendered and the full price for the province in my blood, did you not, in spite of this, share with him the contents of the public chest? Can this indeed be true? Was the assignment of the consular provinces, which Gaius Gracchus, the unique example of an extreme democrat, not only did not take away from the senate, but even enacted by legislation were year by year to be assigned through the senate, annulled by you after it had been decreed by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian law; and were those provinces given by express nomination, extraordinarily and without the lot, not to consuls, but to public pests? And are we to be censured by you for having nominated to the control of a vital matter of state policy, which seemed insoluble, a great man who had repeatedly in the past been chosen to cope with the gravest crises of the state?

And what is the upshot of it all? Had you been able, amid all the gloom and blinding clouds and storms that then enveloped the state, when you had hurled the senate from the helm, sent the democracy by the board, and yourself, like a pirate chief, with your abominable crew of robbers, sailed forth with every stitch of canvas filled, - had you been able then to carry out your proposals, determinations, promises, and bargainings, what spot on the round world would have been untroubled by the symbols of extraordinary power and by the plenipotentiaries of Clodius?

But the resentment of Gnaeus Pompeius, - and, though it is in his hearing, I shall speak frankly what I have felt and what I still feel, whatever may be the sentiments with which he listens to me, - the resentment of Gnaeus Pompeius, I say, which had lain too long dormant in the deep recesses of his mind, was roused at length, and came suddenly to the aid of the republic, and bade her, cowed, enfeebled, and cringing though she was, to entertain some hope of regaining her freedom and her ancient pride. Was it wrong to give an extraordinary supervision over the corn-supply to this great man? You, forsooth, passed a law by which you made over all supplies both public and private, all the corn-supplying provinces, all the contractors, and all the keys of the granaries to Sextus Clodius, a man deep in destitution and crime, a foul glutton who sampled your debaucheries for you, who shared your blood, and who by his tongue had estranged even your sister from you, - a law whose first-fruits were high prices, and whose aftermath was famine. Hunger, incendiarism, murder, and pillaging hung over us; your reckless policy was a menace to the fortunes and property of all. And the unconscionable scoundrel actually grumbles that the administration of supplies has been snatched from the filthy maw of Sextus Clodius, and that in her gravest peril the republic has implored the aid of a man who, she remembers, has often preserved and glorified her. Clodius is opposed to the passing of any extraordinary measure. What! you slayer of father, brother, and sister! Was not the measure which you say you passed concerning myself an extraordinary measure? Had you any right to pass, I will not say a law, but an iniquitous piece of party legislation, to work the downfall of a citizen who had recently by the unanimous verdict of gods and men been declared the saviour of the state, and who, as you yourself admit, so far from having been condemned, had not even been arraigned, amid the mourning of the senate and the grief of all true patriots, while the prayers of all Italy were disdained, and while the republic lay crushed and paralysed? And had I no right, on the supplication of the Roman people, the demand of the senate, and the urgent appeal of the crisis through which the state was passing, to declare my policy for the salvation of the Roman people? And if in this declaration I enhanced the dignity of Gnaeus Pompeius conjointly with the public weal, I should surely deserve approbation, if it were seen that the man to whose greatness I gave my vote was one who had furthered and promoted my own welfare.

Let my enemies once and for all resign the hope that now after my restoration I can be undermined by the same engines which they used to shatter me when as yet I was unassailed. For what bond between any friends of consular rank was ever closer in this state than that which bound Gnaeus Pompeius and myself one to the other? Who has ever dwelt upon his merits in more laudatory terms before the Roman people, or more frequently before the senate? What toil, what rivalry, what controversy has ever been so formidable that I have shrunk from facing it, when his prestige was at stake? And, on his side, what opportunity of conferring distinction upon myself, of advertising my glory, or of repaying my kindly feelings towards him, has he ever omitted?

There are men whom I could name who, by baseless insinuations and false charges, have undermined our close sympathy, our union for the wise administration of the state, and our delightful partnership in all the round of life's duties. At one minute they would warn him to be apprehensive and guarded against me; at another they would say in my hearing that his bitter enmity was directed solely against myself; and the result was that I, for my part, was unable to claim from him with sufficient confidence what I was entitled to claim, while he, with his views jaundiced by a host of suspicions wickedly suggested by certain individuals, was backward in entering into such unreserved engagements with me as my situation required.

I have paid a bitter penalty for my delusion, gentlemen; my folly has brought me not sorrow alone, but shame, for although my connexion with that gallant and distinguished man was occasioned, not by any unforeseen conjuncture in my affairs, but by activities which I had undertaken and premeditated long before, I yet allowed myself to be severed from that noble friendship, nor did I realise whom I was resisting, in the belief that they were declared enemies, or whom I was refusing to trust, in the belief that their friendship was an ambuscade. Accordingly, let them finally resign their efforts to play upon my pride with their old phrases: "What is our friend's notion? Does he fail to recognise the extent of his influence, the greatness of his achievements, the splendour which has attended his restoration? Why does he contribute to the fame of one who has left him in the lurch?"

But I do not consider that I was then left in the lurch, though I do consider that I was all but betrayed; nor do I think that I am called upon to disclose the nature, methods, and agents of the measures taken to thwart me during that public conflagration. If it was expedient for the state that I, and I alone, should drain on behalf of all the cup of humiliation and ruin, then it is also expedient that I should cover with the veil of silence the identity of those by whose treachery that cup was mixed. But there is one fact which it would be ingratitude to conceal, and consequently I shall most joyfully avow that Gnaeus Pompeius by his zeal and influence, and each individual of you by his resources, his assiduity, his prayers, and last and chiefest by the risks that he faced, laboured to procure my restoration. Night and day, Publius Lentulus, your every thought was for my safety, yet you formed no plan to which he did not contribute something; his was the fortifying influence that enabled you to initiate, his the unfailing sympathy that enabled you to execute, his the stalwart support that enabled you to effect your purposes. He it was that made overtures to municipalities and colonies; he it was who implored the aid of united Italy, which pined for me; he was the prime mover of the project in the senate, and he too it was who, at the close of his speech on the motion, added an appeal to the Roman people for my restoration.

In view of this, we will allow you to drop the argument you employed, when you urged that after I had propounded my corn policy the Pontifical College had altered their attitude; as though, indeed, their sentiments regarding Gnaeus Pompeius were different from mine, or as though they did not know what it was necessary for me to do, so as to act up to the anticipations of the Roman people, the obligations which Gnaeus Pompeius had conferred upon me, or the requirements of my situation; or, again, as if any member of the College whose susceptibilities were offended by my opinions (and I am convinced that none were so offended) would be likely for that reason to arrive at a different decision, as pontiff upon religion, and as citizen upon politics, from that which was forced upon him by the laws of ritual and the welfare of the community.