Suasoriae

SUASORIA 1. Alexander deliberates whether to sail the Ocean.

1. To whatever thing nature has given greatness, she has given also a limit: nothing is without bound except the Ocean. They say that fertile lands lie out in the Ocean, and beyond the Ocean other shores again, and that a new world arises, and that the nature of things nowhere comes to an end, but that ever, from the very point where it seemed to cease, a new world springs up. Such tales are easily invented, because the Ocean cannot be sailed. Let it suffice that Alexander has conquered as far as it suffices for the world to be lit. Within these lands Hercules earned heaven. The sea stands unmoved, a sluggish mass, as of a nature failing at its own boundary: strange and terrible shapes, monsters great even for the Ocean, which that vast deep nourishes; light confounded in thick darkness, and the day cut off by gloom; the sea itself heavy and fixed fast, and stars either none or unknown. So it is, Alexander: such is the nature of things — after all things, the Ocean; after the Ocean, nothing.

2. ARGENTARIUS. Halt: your own world calls you back. We have conquered as far as is permitted. There is nothing so great that I should seek it at Alexander's peril. POMPEIUS SILO. That day has come, Alexander, the longed-for day on which work has failed you: the boundaries of your kingdom and of the world are one and the same. OSCUS. It is time for Alexander to come to an end together with the world and with the sun. What I knew, I have conquered; now I crave what I do not know. What nations were ever so savage that they did not bend the knee and worship Alexander? What mountains so forbidding whose ridges the conquering soldier has not trodden? We have halted beyond the trophies of father Liber. We do not seek a world; we lose one. An immeasurable sea, untried by human experience, the bond of the whole world and the guard of its lands, a waste unstirred by any oar, its shores now restless with raging waves, now deserted when the tide flees: a foul gloom presses upon the waves, and an eternal night — I know not what nature has withdrawn from human eyes — buries all. MUSA. The hideous size of the beasts and the unmoving deep bear witness, Alexander, that there is nothing left beyond for you to conquer: turn back.

3. ALBUCIUS SILUS. The lands too have their own boundary, and even the world itself has its setting; nothing is without limit. You must set a limit upon greatness, since fortune sets none. To show moderation amid prosperity is the mark of a great heart. Fortune sets the same boundary to your victory as nature sets to herself: the Ocean closes off your empire. Oh, how far your greatness has surpassed even the nature of things! To the world Alexander is great; to Alexander the world is narrow. There is a limit even to greatness: the heaven does not advance beyond its own spaces, the seas are stirred within their own bounds. Whatever has reached its summit has left no room for increase. We know nothing more beyond Alexander than beyond the Ocean. MARULLUS. We follow the seas; to whom do we hand over the lands? I seek a world I do not know; the one I have conquered I leave behind.

4. FABIANUS. What? Does that gloom poured over the whole sea seem to admit you as you sail, when it shuts out even one who would look ahead? This is not India, nor that terrible gathering of wild beasts. Set before your mind monstrous beasts; behold with what storms and waves it rages, what waves it drives upon the shores. So great is the meeting of the winds, such is the madness of the sea convulsed from its very depths; there is no anchorage at hand for sailors, nothing saving, nothing known: a raw and unfinished nature has withdrawn far within. These seas not even those who were fleeing Alexander made for. Sacred indeed is the Ocean that nature has poured around the lands. Those very men who have collected even the courses of the stars and reduced the yearly turns of winter and summer to a fixed law, to whom no part of the world is unknown, still doubt about the Ocean — whether it flows around the lands like a bond, or is gathered into a world of its own and seethes up into these bays through which men sail, like vents, as it were, of its greatness; whether it has fire behind it, of which it is itself the increase, or air. What are you doing, comrades? Do you send away the tamer of the human race, the great Alexander, to a place about which it is still disputed what it is? Remember, Alexander: you leave your mother in a world conquered, but still more conquered than pacified.

5. THE DIVISION. Cestius used to say that this kind of suasoria must be declaimed otherwise than it would be argued in earnest. One does not deliver an opinion in the same way in a free state as before kings, to whom even what is profitable must be so urged as to please. And among kings themselves there is a difference: some hate the truth less, some more; Alexander, we are told, easily lost his temper — and we have heard that he was most arrogant and puffed up beyond the measure of a mortal mind. In short, to pass over the other arguments, the very suasoria convicts him of insolence: his own world does not contain him; and so, he said, nothing must be spoken save with the highest reverence for the king, lest the same thing happen as happened to his teacher, the cousin of Aristotle, whom he killed because of ill-timed free jests: for when Alexander wished to be thought a god, and had been wounded, at the sight of his blood the philosopher said that he marvelled it was not "ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods." Alexander avenged himself for that wit with his spear. There is an elegant remark placed in a certain letter of Gaius Cassius sent to Marcus Cicero: he jokes much about the folly of young Gnaeus Pompey, who raised an army in Spain and was beaten in battle at Munda; and then he says, "We, indeed, laugh at him, but I fear lest he sneer back at us with the sword." In all kings this wit is to be dreaded.

6. He used to say, then, that before Alexander one must deliver one's opinion so that his mind might be soothed with much flattery, yet some measure must be kept, lest reason should collapse and something happen of the sort that happened to the Athenians, when their public flatteries were not only detected but castigated. For when Antony wished to be called father Liber, and ordered this name to be inscribed beneath his statues, and imitated Liber even in dress and retinue, the Athenians came out to meet him on his arrival, with wives and children, and saluted him as Dionysus. The thing would have turned out prettily for them, if the Attic nose had stopped there; but they said that they betrothed to him their own Minerva in marriage, and begged him to take her. Antony said he would take her, but that in the name of dowry he laid upon them a thousand talents. Then one of the little Greeks said: "Lord, Zeus had your mother Semele without a dowry." This man, indeed, went unpunished, but the Athenians' betrothal was valued at a thousand talents. And when these were being exacted, several insulting placards were posted up, some even handed to Antony himself: such as the one set beneath his statue, when at the same time he had both Octavia for wife and Cleopatra: "Octavia and Athena to Antony:

7. take back your own goods." But the prettiest thing of all was said by Dellius — whom Messala Corvinus calls the trick-rider of the civil wars, because, when he was about to go over from Dolabella to Cassius, he bargained for his own safety on condition that he killed Dolabella; then he passed from Cassius to Antony, and at the last deserted from Antony to Caesar. This is the Dellius whose wanton letters to Cleopatra are in circulation. When the Athenians asked for time to bring together the money, and could not obtain it, Dellius said: "And yet tell them that they owe you the sum at one year, at two years, at three years." The sweetness of these little tales has led me on too far; so let me return to my subject.

8. Cestius used to say that this suasoria must be delivered with great praises of Alexander, and he divided it thus: that first one should say that even if the Ocean could be sailed, it ought not to be sailed; that glory enough had been won; that what he had conquered in passing must be governed and set in order; that thought must be taken for the soldier, weary with so many of his victories; that he must think of his mother — and he added several other reasons besides. Then he subjoined the further question, that the Ocean could not even be sailed.

9. Fabianus the philosopher made the first question the same: that even if the Ocean could be sailed, it ought not to be sailed. But he made another reason the first: that a limit must be imposed upon prosperity. Here he uttered the sentence: "That alone is great good fortune which has stood at its own discretion." Then he developed the topic of the changeableness of fortune; and when he had described how nothing is stable, how all things float and, by uncertain motions, are now raised up, now pressed down — lands swallowed up and seas dried away, mountains sinking — and then gave examples of kings rolled down from their pinnacle, he added: "Suffer rather the nature of things to fail than your own fortune."

10. The second question too he handled differently: for he divided it thus, that first he denied that there were any habitable lands in the Ocean or beyond the Ocean. Then, that even if there were, one could not reach them; here, the difficulty of the voyage, the nature of the unknown sea not suffering navigation. Lastly, that even granting one could reach them, they were not worth so much. Here he said that the uncertain was being sought and the certain abandoned; that the nations would revolt, if it became known that Alexander had passed beyond the boundaries of the nature of things; here, the mother, of whom he said: "How she trembled even when you were about to cross the Granicus!"

11. There is a famous sentence of Glycon: "This is not the Simois nor the Granicus; this, if it were not some evil thing, would not lie last of all." All wished to imitate this. Plution said: "And for this reason it is greatest: because it itself comes after all things, but after it comes nothing." Artemon said: "We must deliberate whether indeed we ought to cross over. We do not stand upon the Hellespontine shores, nor upon the Pamphylian sea do we await the tide due at its appointed hour; nor is this the Euphrates, nor the Indus, but whether it be the end of the earth, or the boundary of nature, or the most ancient element, or the birthplace of the gods, it is water too holy for ships." Apaturius said: "From here the ship, by a single course, goes toward the dawn; but from there, toward the unseen settings." Cestius described it:

12. "Thus the Ocean roars, as if indignant that you leave the lands." The most corrupt thing of all that have ever been said, since eloquent men began to go mad, they thought was a saying of Dorion in his paraphrase of Homer, where the blinded Cyclops hurls a rock into the sea . . . How such things may pass over, from being corrupt, to being at once great and yet sound, Maecenas used to say one could understand in Virgil. This is swollen: "mountain is torn from mountain." What does Virgil say? "He tears away no small part of the mountain." So he departs from the magnitude in such a way that he does not imprudently depart from credibility. This is inflated: "and the island is struck home." What does Virgil say, of the ships? "you would believe the Cyclades, torn up, were swimming." He does not say that this happens, but that it seems to. It is received with favourable ears, although it is incredible, because it is excused before it is said.

13. A far more corrupt sentence I came upon, of one Menestratus, a declaimer not despised in his own day, in this very suasoria, when he was describing the size of the beasts born in the Ocean . . . This sentence makes us pardon the man who said there was a monster greater than Charybdis and Scylla themselves: "Charybdis, the shipwreck of the sea itself" — and, lest he should go mad only once over one thing: "what can be safe there, where the sea itself perishes?" Damas brought in, in the manner of character-painting, the mother speaking, when he described how, upon the former dangers, new ones constantly came: . . . Barbarus said, when he had introduced the army of the Macedonians excusing themselves, this thought: . . . Fuscus Arellius said:

14. "I call to witness that your world will fail you before your soldier." Latro delivered this sitting; he did not excuse the soldier, but said: "While I follow you, who promises me an enemy, who land, who a day, who a sea? Give me where to pitch camp, where to plant the standards. I left my parents, I left my children; I ask for furlough — surely not too early, from the Ocean?"

15. The Latin declaimers were not over-vigorous in describing the Ocean; for either they described too little, or too elaborately. None of them could speak with so great a breath as Pedo, who, as Germanicus sailed, says: "Long since they leave behind their backs the daylight and the sun, long since, cast out from the known bounds of the world, they dare to go through forbidden darkness to the goals of things and the farthest shores of the world; now him who beneath the sluggish waves bears monstrous portents, the Ocean, who on every side raises savage sea-beasts and the hounds of the deep against the seized ships. The very crash heaps up their fears. Now in the mud they think their vessels stick fast, the fleet deserted by the swift wind, and themselves left by an unkindly lot to be torn by the sea-brutes through a sluggish doom. And one, striving with battling gaze to break through the air, when, the world snatched from him, he could make out nothing, poured forth from his choked breast such words as these: 'Whither are we borne? The very day flees, and farthest nature shuts off the world we have left in perpetual darkness. Or do we seek nations set beyond, under another pole, and another world untouched by storm-winds? The gods call us back, and forbid mortal eyes to know the end of things. Why do we violate with our oars alien seas and the sacred waters, and trouble the gods' quiet abodes?'"

16. Of the Greek declaimers, this suasoria went off better with none than with Glycon; yet he said no fewer things magnificently than corruptly: I will give you the chance of both. And I wished to test you by not adding my own judgment, nor separating the sound from the corrupt — for it might have come about that you praised more those things which are mad — and nevertheless it will still be possible, even though I have made the distinction. This he said prettily: . . . but he did what he was wont to do, ruining a sentence by a superfluous and swollen addition; for he added: . . . This leaves some doubtful of their judgment — I, for my part, do not doubt to vote against the sentence: "Farewell, earth; farewell, sun: for the Macedonians are sailing into Chaos."

SUASORIA 2. The three hundred Spartans sent against Xerxes deliberate whether they too should flee, since the three hundred sent from the rest of Greece have fled.

1. But, I suppose, a raw generation has been chosen, and a spirit to be broken by fear, and hands that will not endure unwonted arms, and bodies dulled by age or wounds: am I to speak of the foremost of Greece? Of the Spartans? Of the Eleans? Or am I to recount so many battle-lines of our fathers, so many razings of cities, so many spoils of conquered nations? And now are the temples that were founded without walls being betrayed? I am ashamed of our deliberation; I am ashamed to have deliberated such things, even if we do not flee. "But Xerxes has come with so many thousands." O Spartans, even against the barbarians do you not revere your own deeds, your grandsires, your fathers, by whose example your spirit rises from infancy? It is shameful for Spartans to be exhorted thus: "Lo, we are safe in our position. Though he drag all the East along with his fleet, though he spread out a useless multitude for the timid, this sea, which opens out so wide from the vast deep, is squeezed into the smallest of straits; it is caught in treacherous narrows, and scarcely is there entrance for the smallest ship; and even this ship's rowing the surrounding sea hinders by its turbulence — shoals deceiving the course, set among the deeper waters, rough with reefs, and all the rest that mocks the prayers of sailors." It is shameful, I say, for Spartans even under arms to ask how they may be safe. Shall I not bring back the spoils of the Persians?

2. Surely upon the spoils I shall fall stripped. Let Xerxes know that we too have other three hundred who would not flee like this, and would fall like this. Take up this spirit: I know not whether we can conquer; we cannot be conquered. I do not at all relate these things to men doomed to perish; but if we must fall, you are wrong, if you believe death is to be feared. To no one has nature given breath for ever, and from birth a day is fixed for the end of life. For God began us from a feeble stuff; indeed by the slightest causes our bodies are cut down, and we are snatched away by an unannounced lot; childhood lies under the same doom, youth falls by the same cause; most of us even pray for death — so much is the withdrawal from life into untroubled rest. But of glory there is no end, and those nearest the gods thus lead it on: for women too this is often a path to death in exchange for glory. Why should I recount Lycurgus, why the men undaunted by every peril whom memory has hallowed? To stir up Othryades alone, I can number examples to match the three hundred.

3. TRIARIUS. Is it not shameful for the Spartans to be conquered not even by the battle of enemies, but by a tale? It is a great thing to be born a nursling of valour, and a Spartan. For a certain victory all would have remained; for certain death, the Spartans alone. Sparta is not girt with stones: there she has her walls where she has her men. We shall do better to call back the three hundred who flee than to follow them. "But he pierces mountains, he roofs over seas." Never has proud good fortune stood on solid ground, and the lofty pinnacles of mighty empires have collapsed through forgetfulness of human frailty. You may know that what has been led on to envy has not reached its end. Seas and lands, the nature of things, he has changed from their station: let us three hundred die, that here at last he may find something which he could not change.

4. If a counsel so insane was going to please, why did we not rather flee in the throng? PORCIUS LATRO. For this, no doubt, we have lingered, that we might gather up the column of the fleeing. You turn your backs to a rumour: let us at least know what sort of man this is whom we flee. Scarcely by victory can the disgrace be washed out; though everything be done bravely and fall out happily, much has nonetheless been taken from our name: we Spartans have already deliberated whether to flee. Would that we may die! As far as concerns me, at least, after this deliberation I fear nothing else but to return. The tale strikes our arms from our hands. Now, now let us fight: valour would have lain hidden among the three hundred. "The rest, indeed, have fled." If you ask me what I think, I will speak both in our own defence and in that of Greece:

5. we were chosen, not left behind. GAVIUS SABINUS. It is shameful for any man whatever to have fled, but for a Spartan even to have deliberated. MARULLUS. For this we have stood our ground, that we might not lie hidden in the throng of the fleeing. The three hundred of Greece have a way to excuse themselves: "We thought Thermopylae safe, since we left the Spartans there." CESTIUS PIUS. You have shown how shameful it was to flee, Spartans, by so long not fleeing. To all their own glories belong: Athens is famed for eloquence, Thebes for her rites, Sparta for arms. Therefore the river Eurotas flows around her, hardening boyhood to the endurance of future soldiering; therefore the ridges of Taygetus' grove are hard to none but Spartans; therefore we glory in Hercules made a god, who by his labours earned heaven; therefore our walls are our arms.

6. O grievous disgrace to the valour of our forefathers! The Spartans count themselves; they do not weigh themselves. Let us see how great the throng is — that Sparta may have, even if not brave soldiers, at least true messengers. Are we then conquered not even by war, but by a message? Rightly, by Hercules, has he despised all things, whom the Spartans cannot bear even to hear of. If it is not allowed to conquer Xerxes, let it be allowed to see him: I wish to know what I flee. In no respect am I yet like the Athenians, neither in walls nor in upbringing: shall I imitate nothing of theirs sooner than their flight?

7. POMPEIUS SILO. Xerxes brings many with him; Thermopylae receives few. We shall be, among the brave, the most cowardly; among cowards, the slowest. It matters nothing how great the nations are that the East has poured upon our world, how many tribes Xerxes drags with him: only so many concern us as the place has room for. CORNELIUS HISPANUS. We have come for Sparta; let us stand for Greece. Let us conquer the enemy; the allies we have already conquered. Let that insolent barbarian know that nothing is harder than to pierce the flank of an armed Spartan. For my part, I rejoice that they have departed: they have left Thermopylae free for us; there will be nothing to set itself against our valour, nothing to thrust itself in; the Spartan will not lie hidden in a throng; wherever Xerxes looks, he will see Spartans. BLANDUS.

8. I will repeat the precepts of our mothers: "either upon these, or with these." It is less shameful to come back from war unarmed than to flee in arms. Shall I repeat the words of the captives? A Spartan, taken, said, "Kill me; I am no slave." He could not but be taken, if he had wished to flee. Describe the terrors of the Persians: all this we heard when we were sent forth. Let Xerxes see three hundred, and know at how much the war was reckoned, for how great a number the place was fit. We shall not even return as messengers, save as the last. Who has fled, I do not know: Sparta gave me these as comrades-in-arms. THE DESCRIPTION OF THERMOPYLAE. Now it pleases me that the three hundred have fled:

9. they had made Thermopylae too narrow for me. ON THE OTHER SIDE. CORNELIUS HISPANUS. But I see that the greatest disgrace will come to our commonwealth, if Xerxes shall conquer nothing in Greece before he conquers the Spartans. We cannot have even a witness of our valour; that will be believed of us which the enemy report. You have my counsel; and that is mine which is all Greece's. If anyone advises otherwise, he wishes you not brave, but ruined. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS. They will not conquer us, but overwhelm us. We have satisfied our name; we have yielded last:

10. before us, the nature of things was conquered.

THE DIVISION. I have made mention of this suasoria, not because there was in it any subtlety that could rouse you, but that you might know how brilliantly Fuscus spoke, or how licentiously: I will not myself cast a vote; it shall be at your discretion whether you blame his developments as extravagant or praise them as lively. Asinius Pollio used to say that this was not to argue at all. I recall that nothing, when I was a youth, was so well known as these developments of Fuscus, which there was not one of us who did not chant, each in his own modulation, now with this, now with that inflection of voice. But since I have once fallen into mention of Fuscus, I will weave in from all the suasoriae his famous little descriptions, even if nothing shall occur that anyone but a declaimer would have loved.

11. In the division of this suasoria Fuscus used that common one, saying that it was not honourable to flee, even if it were safe; then, that to flee and to fight were equally perilous; lastly, that to flee was the more perilous: that those who fight have only the enemy to fear, but those who flee, both the enemy and their own men. Cestius passed over the first part as though no one doubted whether it was shameful to flee; then he passed to this, whether it were not necessary. "These are the things," he said, "that confound you: the enemy, the flight of the allies, your own fewness." Not indeed in this suasoria, but on this theme, that most eloquent sentence of Dorion is told, when he had set down that Leonidas said this to the three hundred — which I think is even in Herodotus — "Take your breakfast as men who shall sup in Hades."

12. Sabinus Asilius, the most charming buffoon among the rhetoricians, when he had reported this sentence of Leonidas, said: "I would have promised him my company at breakfast, but sent my excuses for supper." Attalus the Stoic, who went into exile, circumvented by Sejanus, a man of great eloquence — of those philosophers whom your age has seen, by far the most subtle and the most fluent — contended with so great and noble a sentence, and seemed to me to have spoken with more spirit than the former . . . There comes to my mind a thought uttered in a theme of this kind by Cornelius Severus, as of the Romans, with perhaps too little bravery. He brings in the soldiers feasting, the battle proclaimed for the next day, and says: "and stretched out on the grass, 'This day,' they said, 'is mine.'" Most elegantly indeed he expressed the feeling of minds hanging in the uncertain lot; but too little of the Roman spirit's greatness is kept: for they sup as men who despair of the morrow. How great was the spirit of those Spartans, who could not say:

13. "This day is mine." Porcellus the grammarian found fault in this verse, as with a solecism, that, having brought in several speakers, he made them say "This day is mine," not "this is ours"; and in an excellent sentence he condemned the very thing that was excellent. For change it, so that it be "ours": all the elegance of the verse will perish, in which this is most fitting, that it is drawn from common speech; for it stands as if in the place of a proverb: "this day is mine"; and when you refer it to the sense, not even the cavil of the grammarians — which is to be banished by all great talents — will have a place: for they did not all say it at once, as in a chorus, with the grammarian leading the hand, but each one of them severally: "This day is mine."

14. But to return to Leonidas and the three hundred, that most beautiful sentence of Glycon is told. In this very suasoria I do not, indeed, recall to memory any sentence of any Greek save that of Damas: "Whither will you flee? Arms are your walls." Of the position of the place Haterius spoke elegantly, when he had most eloquently described the narrowness of the spot: "a place born for three hundred." Cestius, when he had described the honours they would have, if they had fallen for their country, added: "men will swear by our tombs." Nicetes moved this fancy far more eloquently and added: . . . "had Xerxes not been more ancient than Demosthenes . . ." to whom to speak. This he uttered as his own sentence, or at least one not caught out, when he had described the advantage of the place, and the flanks of the combatants safe on every side, and the narrows set in the rear,

15. but facing the enemy . . . Potamon was a great declaimer at Mitylene, who flourished at the same time as Lesbocles, of great name, and of a talent answering to his name: among whom how great a diversity of spirit there was in a like fortune I think I must show you, much more because it pertains to life than if it pertained to eloquence. To each a son died on the same days: Lesbocles dissolved his school; no one ever afterward heard him declaim. With even mind Potamon withdrew from his son's funeral: he betook himself to the school and declaimed. Yet I think each one's feeling must be tempered: the one bore his fortune more harshly than became a father; the other more softly than became a man.

16. Potamon, when he was delivering the suasoria about the three hundred, used to treat how shamefully the Spartans had acted in this very thing, that they had deliberated about flight, and thus at last he closed . . . Many ran mad in this suasoria over Othryades: Murredius, who said: "The Athenians fled; for they had not learned the writings of our Othryades." Gargonius said: "Othryades, who perished that he might deceive, came back to life that he might conquer." Licinius Nepos: "by whose example you ought to have conquered even when dead." Antonius Atticus, among these puerile sentences, seems to have won the palm; for he said: "Othryades, almost a conqueror from the very tomb, pressed his wounds with his fingers, that he might inscribe upon the trophy the word 'Spartan.' O ink worthy of a Spartan! O man whose very letters were not without blood!" Catius Crispus, a small-town man, said in the worst affected style, after he had reported the example of Othryades: "One thing befits the rest, another the Spartans: we are reared without dainties, we live without walls, we conquer without life."

17. There was Seneca, whose name may have reached you, a man of confused and turbulent talent, who longed to say grand things, to such a point that at last he was both gripped by a disease of this passion and laughed at; for he would not have servants unless they were big, nor silver vessels unless they were big. Believe me — and I am not joking — his madness went so far that he took even larger shoes, would eat no figs but the marisca, and kept a concubine of enormous stature. If ever he found anything grand, he approved it; whence the nickname was put upon him — or, as Messala says, the surname — and he began to be called Seneca Grandio. When in this suasoria he had set down the objection, "but all who were sent from Greece have fled," lifting his hands, standing on tiptoe — for so he was wont to do, that he might become grander — he cried out: "I rejoice, I rejoice." When we marvelled what great good had befallen him, he added: "the whole of Xerxes shall be mine." Likewise he said: "Let that man, who has stolen the seas with his fleets, who has circumscribed the lands, widened the deep, and commands a new face for the nature of things — let him by all means pitch his camp against heaven: I shall have the gods as comrades-in-arms."

18. Senianus said with much more force: "He besieges the lands with arms, the heaven with arrows, the seas with chains: Spartans, unless you bring help, the world is taken captive." I will report a foolish sentence of a most decorous kind, by Victor Stator, a fellow-townsman of mine, from whose tales — most worthy of being remembered — someone took, on the occasion of this suasoria, the objection: "But," he said, "we are three hundred"; and he answered thus: "Three hundred, but men; but armed; but Spartans; but at Thermopylae: never have I seen more than three hundred."

19. Latro in this suasoria, when he had handled all that the theme allowed — that they could even conquer, and could at least return unconquered by the advantage of the place — then added that sentence: "If nothing else, we shall at least be the delay of the war." Afterward I remember that Abronius Silo, a pupil of Latro — the father of this Silo who wrote plays for the pantomimes and not only deserted but defiled a great talent — recited a poem in which we recognized the thought of Latro in these verses: "Go to, go, O Danaans, singing the great paean; go triumphing: the delay of the war, Hector, has fallen." So diligent then were the hearers — not to say so malicious — that not one word could be filched:

20. but now anyone may safely deliver the orations against Verres as his own. But that you may know that a thought well said can yet be said better, mark before the rest how much more becomingly Virgil said this thing which was much celebrated, "the delay of the war, Hector, has fallen": "Whatever delay there was before the walls of hostile Troy, by the hand of Hector and Aeneas the victory of the Greeks stuck fast." Messala used to say that here Virgil ought to have stopped; that what follows, "and drew back its steps into the tenth year," is mere filling — and Maecenas too compared this with the former.

21. But to return to Thermopylae: Diocles of Carystus said . . . Apaturius said . . . To Corvus the rhetor a testimony of stupidity must be rendered, who said: "What? If Xerxes is now sailing to us upon his own sea, let us flee before the land is stolen from under us." This is that Corvus who, when he was trying his school at Rome, declaimed before the famous Sosius who had subdued the Jews, a controversia about the woman who used to argue before the matrons that children ought not to be reared, and is on this account accused of injuring the state. In this controversia this sentence of his was laughed at: "Among rouge-pots and the medicines of a sweet-smelling breath the mitred assembly took its stand."

22. But if you wish, I will give you a stupid historian too. That Tuscus, who had made Mamercus Scaurus — in whom the family of the Scauri became extinct — a defendant on a charge of treason, a man of as wicked a mind as of an unlucky talent, when he declaimed this suasoria, said: "Let us wait, if for nothing else, to bring this at least about, that the insolent barbarian may not say, 'I came, I saw, I conquered'" — whereas the deified Julius said this many years later, when Pharnaces was conquered. Durion said: "Men . . ." Nicocrates the Spartan used to say that this sentence would have been remarkable, if the middle were cut out.

23. But not to make fools of you any longer: since I had said that I would subjoin the developments of Fuscus Arellius, here I will make an end of the suasoriae; whose excessive ornament and broken composition may offend you, when you come to my age: meanwhile I do not doubt that now the very faults which are going to offend delight you.

SUASORIA 3. Agamemnon deliberates whether to sacrifice Iphigenia, since Calchas declares that otherwise he cannot sail.

1. Not into any other condition did God pour out the seas than that not every day should go according to one's wish; nor is this lot of the sea alone: look at the heaven. Are not the stars under the same condition? At one time, denying their rains, they parch the soil, and the wretched farmers mourn their burned-up seeds, and this is sometimes the law of the year; at another the serene skies are shut, and every day weighs down the heaven with cloud: the soil sinks, and the earth does not hold what was entrusted to it; at another the course is uncertain in the stars: the seasons are confounded, and neither do the suns press too hard nor do the rains fall beyond what is due: whatever has been roughened by heat, whatever has dissolved in too much rain, is in turn tempered by the other; whether nature has so disposed it, or whether, as they say, the moon governs by her course — which, whether full of her own light and rising in splendour equally into her horns, forbids rains; or, occupied by cloud, shows her orb more sullied, and does not end it before she gives back the light; or whether even the moon has not this power, but the winds that have taken hold keep the year — whichever of these it is, the sea, beyond the command of God, has been safe for the adulterer. "But I shall not be able to avenge the adulteress." The safety of the chaste is first; that I might fear nothing for the maidenhood of this girl, I was pursuing the adulterer. Troy conquered, I shall spare the maidens of the enemy: as yet no maiden of Priam's fears anything.

2. CESTIUS PIUS. You I still invoke, immortal gods: thus will you open the seas? Stand in the way rather. You are not going to sacrifice even the children of Priam. Describe now the storm: all this we suffer, and we have committed no kin-murder. What sacred thing is this, to slay a maiden in the temple of a maiden goddess? She will rather have this girl for a priestess than for a victim. CORNELIUS HISPANUS. "The storms are hostile," he says, "and the seas rage, and as yet I have committed no kin-murder." If God ruled those seas by his own will, they would be shut against adulterers. MARULLUS. If a road to war is not granted us, let us return to our children. ARGENTARIUS. Again we are rolled back into the fatal misfortune of our family: because of a brother's adulteress, the children perish. At such a price I should be unwilling that she return.

3. But let Priam wage war for his adulterous son. THE DIVISION. Fuscus divided this suasoria thus, that he should say that even if they could not otherwise sail, it ought not to be done; and he treated it so as to deny that it ought to be done, because it was homicide, because it was kin-murder, because more was being spent than was sought: Helen was being sought, Iphigenia was being spent; an adultery was being avenged, a kin-murder was being committed. Then he said that, even if he had not sacrificed her, he would sail; for that delay belonged to nature, to sea and winds, and the will of the gods is not understood by men. This Cestius divided carefully: for he said that the gods do not interpose their judgment in human affairs; that, granting they do interpose it, their will is not understood by man; that, granting it is understood, the fates cannot be recalled. If there be no fates, the future is unknown; if there be, it cannot be changed.

4. Silo Pompeius, even granting there were a certain kind of divination, denied that auguries were to be believed: "Why then, if Calchas does not know, does he affirm at the outset, and think that he knows?" Here he uttered a commonplace against all who lay claim to this knowledge; then: "He is angry with you, he soldiers against his will, he seeks credence for himself by so great a testimony among all nations." In that description which I set first in this suasoria, Fuscus Arellius wished to imitate Virgil's verses. But he fetched it from very far, and the theme almost resisting — at least not desiring it — he inserted it. For he says of the moon, "which, whether full of her own light and rising in splendour equally into her horns, forbids rains; or, occupied by cloud, shows her orb more sullied, does not end it before she gives back the light."

5. But Virgil said these things how much more simply and more happily: "The Moon, when first she gathers her returning fires, if she enclose her dark horn in dim air, a very great rain shall be prepared for farmers and for the deep." And again: "if . . . pure and with horns not dulled she go through the sky." Fuscus used to draw much from Virgil, that he might put it to Maecenas' account: for he often related, as for a benefit, that he had pleased in some Virgilian description; just as in this very suasoria he said: "Why did this one please in His service? Why did the god choose this mouth? Why does the Pythian draw this one by lot above all?" — whereby, he said, he had all but impiously imitated Virgil's "full of the god."

6. But our friend Gallio is wont to place this most aptly. I remember that once we came together from a recitation of Nicetes to Messala. Nicetes had pleased the Greeks greatly by his vehemence. Messala asked Gallio how Nicetes had seemed to him. Gallio said: "full of the god." Whenever he had heard one of those declaimers whom the school-men call "hot," he would at once say, "full of the god." Messala himself never asked him otherwise, when he came from hearing a new man, than that he should say, "Was he at all full of the god?" And so this was already so familiar to him that it escaped him even against his will.

7. With Caesar, when there was mention of Haterius' talent, slipping by habit he said, "and he too was full of the god." When Caesar then asked what he meant by this, he reported the verse of Virgil, and how this had once escaped him before Messala, and how ever afterward he could not but let it escape. Tiberius himself, a follower of Theodorus, was offended by the talent of Nicetes, and so was pleased by Gallio's anecdote. Gallio used to say that this verse had greatly pleased his friend Ovid; and so he had done what he had done in many other verses of Virgil — not for the sake of pilfering, but of borrowing openly, with the intent that he should wish it recognized; and that in his tragedy there is the line: "I am borne hither and thither, as one full of the god." Now if you wish, I will return to Fuscus, and at once glut you with his descriptions, and most of all with those which he set in the treatment of probability, when he said that the knowledge of the future was in no way granted.

SUASORIA 4. Alexander the Great, warned by an augur of danger, deliberates whether to enter Babylon.

1. ARELLIUS FUSCUS. Who is there that lays claim to himself the knowledge of the future? He must be of a new lot who, at the bidding of a god, chants prophecy, not content with the same womb from which we are born without foresight: let him show forth some image of a god, who displays the commands of a god. So it is; for he forces into fear so great a king and the ruler of so great a world. Let that man be great and above the bearing of human lot, to whom it is permitted to terrify Alexander: let him set his fathers among the stars and draw his origin from heaven; let a god acknowledge him for his prophet; let the head which foretells the future to the nations be not of the same span of life, but of great age, beyond all necessity of the fates. If these things are true, why does not every age serve this study? Why have we not from infancy visited, so far as is permitted, the nature of things and the gods, since the stars lie open to us and it is allowed to be among the divine powers? Why do we sweat over a useless eloquence, or wear out the hand with perilous arms? Or would talents better have risen by some other pledge than the knowledge of the future?

2. But those who, into the midst, as they proclaim, of the fates, wretchedly search out the pledges of birth, and hold the first hour of life the announcer of all the years — by what motion the stars went, into what regions they ran apart, whether a god stood against him, or the sun shone propitious; whether the moon received the full light, or the beginnings of her rising, or hid her dark head in the night; whether Saturn received the new-born, or Mars him for wars as a soldier, or Mercury him for gains as a man of business, or whether kindly Venus smiled upon the new-born, or whether Jupiter bore him from the lowly to the lofty — they reckon up so many gods bustling about one head!

3. They announce the future: most they have declared would live long, yet a day overwhelmed them while they feared nothing; to others they have given a near end, yet those survived, leading useless lives; happy years they promised to the new-born, yet fortune hastened into every injury. For we live under an uncertain lot: to each man these things are feigned according to his talent, not on the credit of knowledge. Will there be any place in the whole world that has not seen you a conqueror? Babylon is shut to him to whom the Ocean lay open.

4. THE DIVISION. In this suasoria I know that Fuscus handled nothing else than those same questions, pertaining to the knowledge of the future, which I reported above. That which delighted us I cannot pass over. Fuscus Arellius had declaimed the controversia about the woman who, after she had thrice borne dead children, said she had dreamed that she should give birth in a grove. I shall be very offensive to you, if I undertake to deliver the whole controversia which I understand . . . When Fuscus declaimed and, on the part of the grandfather not acknowledging the child, treated the topic against dreams and the providence of the gods, and had said that he deserved ill of their greatness who sent them about women in childbed, he uttered, amid the loudest applause, that verse of Virgil:

5. "Is this, forsooth, the toil of the gods above, is this the care that troubles them in their repose?" A certain pupil of Fuscus, whose modesty I spare, when he was delivering this suasoria about Alexander before Fuscus, thought the same verse equally prettily placed, and said: "Is this, forsooth, the toil of the gods above, is this the care that troubles them in their repose?" Fuscus said to him: "If you had said this in Alexander's hearing, you would have learned that there is in Virgil this verse too: 'he buried the sword up to the hilt.'" And since you are wont to be troublesome to me about Fuscus — why no one seemed to speak more elaborately — I will heap upon you the developments of Fuscus. He used to deliver suasoriae most willingly and more frequently in Greek than in Latin. Hybreas in this suasoria said: "What a seer Babylon had for a stronghold!"

SUASORIA 5. The Athenians deliberate whether to take down their trophies of the Persian War, since Xerxes threatens to come back unless they are removed.

1. ARELLIUS FUSCUS. I am ashamed of your victory, if you believe Xerxes was put to flight only that he might be able to return. So many thousands slain, nothing left from so great a battle-line for the man who threatens, save what can scarcely follow him in flight; the fleet so often sunk; why should I recount Marathon, why Salamis? It is shameful to say it: do we still doubt whether we have conquered? Will Xerxes come? Somehow the mind grows faint about the memory of loss, and does not seek again the arms that were scattered. For the former fear is a pledge of the future, and the things he has lost warn him not to dare lest he lose again. As the spirit at times rises in joy and measures hope from the present, so by adversity it is broken. Every day forsakes the spirit when disgrace presses down hope, when it remembers no battle-line save that by which it fled; it wanders about its own losses, and lays aside the prayers in which it was ill-tried. If he were going to come, he would not threaten: anger burns with savage fires and is not discharged in agreements.

2. He would not give warning, if he were going to come; nor would he arm us with the message, nor incite victorious Greece, nor stir up arms that have prospered: he would rather come upon us unforeseeing — for before, too, he had moved his arms without warning. As great as ever the East availed, it was poured out in the first onset against Greece: in this number he was fierce, and even against the gods had borne arms. So many thousands, slain before Xerxes, so many under him, lie low: none survive save those who fled. Why should I speak of Salamis? Why recount Cynegirus, and you, Polyzelus? And is this the question — whether you have conquered? These trophies I set up over you; these I established in the sight of all Greece, that none might fear the threatening Xerxes. Wretch that I am — when Xerxes fought, I set up trophies; now that he flees, shall I take them down? Now, Athens, are we conquered: it will be believed not only that Xerxes returned, but that he conquered.

3. Xerxes cannot take down his trophies save through us. Believe me, it is hard to gather up again worn-out resources, and to renew broken hopes, and from a battle-line one must repent of to rise into confidence of better issue. CESTIUS PIUS. "I will bring war," he says. He promises me other trophies. Can a greater man come than was conquered? ARGENTARIUS. Are you not ashamed?

4. Xerxes esteems your trophies more than you. THE DIVISION. Fuscus divided thus: that even if Xerxes is going to come, unless we take them down, the trophies are not to be taken down. To do as bidden is a confession of slavery: if he comes, we shall conquer; this need not be long established about him: I say "we shall conquer" of one whom we have conquered. But he will not even come: if he were going to come, he would not give warning; he is broken both in strength and in spirit. Cestius added also this, which he treated in the first part, that it is not lawful for the Athenians to take down the trophies: that the common right of all Greece is in them; that the victory was common, the war was common. Then, that it is not even right: that it was never done that anyone laid hands on the works consecrated to his own valour. These trophies are not the Athenians'; they belong to the gods: theirs was the war; them Xerxes pursued with chains, them with arrows. Here, all that pertains to the impious and proud soldiering of Xerxes. What then?

5. "Shall we have war?" We have had it; and if you remove Xerxes, another enemy will be found: great empires are never at leisure. An enumeration of the wars prosperously waged by the Athenians. Then, there will be no war: for Xerxes will not come. They are much more timid now, since they were most arrogant. Lastly, granting he comes, with whom will he come? He will gather the remnants of our victory: he will bring those whom in the former war he had left behind as useless, or any who escaped from the flight. He has no soldier save one either disdained or conquered.

6. Argentarius was content with these two points: either that Xerxes would not come, or that he need not be feared if he came. On these alone he insisted, and said that which was singled out: "'Take down,' he says, 'the trophies.' If you have conquered, why do you blush? If you are conquered, why do you give commands?" He moved a topic not without profit: that he judged, indeed, that neither Xerxes nor now any of the Persians would dare to pour into Greece; but that the trophies must on that account the more be guarded by them, in case any enemy should ever come from that quarter, so that at the sight of the trophies the spirits of the soldiers might be kindled, those of the enemy broken.

7. Blandus said: "Let him first fill up Athos again, and bring back the seas to their ancient face. He wishes it to appear to posterity how he came: let it appear how he returned." Triarius, dismissing all division, only exulted that he heard Xerxes was coming: that a new victory was at hand for them, new trophies. Silo Pompeius used a charming kind of sentence: "'Unless you take down the trophies,' he says, 'I will come.' This is what Xerxes says: unless you take down these trophies, you will set up others."

8. The other side Gallio alone declaimed, and urged that the trophies be taken down; he said that nothing was subtracted from the glory: for the memory of the victory would remain, which was perpetual; the trophies themselves were consumed both by storms and by age; war ought to have been undertaken for liberty, for wives, for children: for a thing superfluous, and that would do no harm if it ceased to be, it ought not to be undertaken. Here he said that Xerxes would assuredly come, and described him swelling against the very gods; then, that he had great forces: that he had neither led all his troops into Greece nor lost all in Greece; that the changefulness of fortune was to be feared; that the strength of Greece was exhausted and could not now endure another war: that he had an immense multitude of men. In this place he uttered a most eloquent sentence, fit to be set either in an oration or in a history: "They can go on perishing longer than we can go on conquering."

SUASORIA 6. Cicero deliberates whether to beg pardon of Antony.

1. QUINTUS HATERIUS. Let posterity know that the commonwealth could be a slave to Antony, but Cicero could not. You will have to praise Antony: in this cause even Cicero will be at a loss for words. Believe me, however carefully you guard yourself, Antony will yet do something that Cicero cannot keep silent about. If you understand him, Cicero, he does not say "beg to live," but "beg to be a slave." And how will you be able to enter this senate, cruelly emptied, shamefully filled up again? Will you wish to enter the senate in which you are not to see Gnaeus Pompey, not Marcus Cato, not the Luculli, not Hortensius, not Lentulus and Marcellus, not — I say — your own consuls, Hirtius and Pansa? Cicero, what have you to do in an alien age? Already our age is played out.

2. Marcus Cato alone, the greatest example of living and of dying, chose to die rather than to beg — and he was not going to beg of Antony — and those hands, pure to his last day from civil blood, he armed against his most sacred breast. Scipio, when he had buried the sword deep within him, said to the soldiers who had crossed over to the ship and asked for the commander: "The commander is well." Conquered, he uttered the voice of a conqueror. "Milo," said he, "forbids the judges to be entreated": go now and entreat Antony. PORCIUS LATRO.

3. Does Cicero, then, ever speak so that Antony does not fear, does Antony ever speak so that Cicero must fear? The Sullan thirst for civil blood comes back upon the state, and at the triumviral spear, in place of revenues, the deaths of citizens are let out for hire; by the white of a single tablet the ruin of Pharsalus and Munda and Mutina is surpassed; consular heads are weighed out for gold: your own words must be used — "O the times, O the manners!" You will see eyes burning with cruelty and pride together; you will see that face, not of a man, but of civil war; you will see those jaws through which the goods of Gnaeus Pompey passed, those flanks, that gladiatorial firmness of his whole body; you will see that place before the tribunal which lately the master of horse — to whom it was shameful even to belch — had befouled with vomit: shall you, a suppliant, fall at his knees and entreat? Shall you, with that mouth to which the public safety owes itself, lower humble words to flattery? Be ashamed: even Verres, when proscribed, perished more bravely.

4. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS AESERNINUS. Let your own Cato come to your mind, whose death was praised by you: do you, then, think anything worth so much that you should owe your life to Antony? CESTIUS PIUS. If you look to the people's longing for you, Cicero, whenever you perish, you have lived too little; if to your deeds, you have lived enough; if to the injuries of fortune and the present state of the commonwealth, you have lived too long; if to the memory of your works, you shall live for ever. POMPEIUS SILO. You may know it is not to your advantage to live, if Antony permits you to live. Will you then be silent while Antony proscribes and tears the commonwealth in pieces? Not even your groan will be free. I would rather the Roman people longed for Cicero dead than living. TRIARIUS. "What Charybdis is so devouring?

5. I said Charybdis — which, if it ever was, was a single creature; scarcely, by my faith, could the Ocean have swallowed at one time so many and so diverse things." Do you think Cicero can be withdrawn from this raging man? ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father. Men run from arms to arms: abroad we are victors, at home we are butchered; at home an enemy within the house broods over our blood: who, in this state of the Roman people, does not think Cicero is compelled to live? You will beg Antony shamefully, Cicero, and in vain. No mean mound will hide you; the end of your valour is the same as that of mortal men. Memory, the guardian of human works, which perpetuates life for great men, will give you, hallowed, to all ages:

6. nothing else will perish but the body of fragile and falling frailty, subject to diseases, exposed to chances, cast before proscriptions; but the soul, drawn from a divine origin, to which there is no old age and no death, loosed from the chains of the burdensome body, will run back to its own abodes and to its kindred stars. And yet, if we look to your age and to the number of years never marked in brave men, you have passed sixty and cannot but seem to have lived too long, since you die surviving the commonwealth. We have seen civil arms raging through the whole world, and after the battle-lines of Italy and Pharsalus, Egypt drank Roman blood. Why are we indignant that Antony is permitted against Cicero what an Alexandrian was permitted against Pompey? Or are not those slain thus who flee to unworthy men? CORNELIUS HISPANUS.

7. He who followed your counsel was proscribed: the whole tablet rehearses for your death; one man suffers his brother to be proscribed, another his uncle: what hope have you? That Cicero might perish, so many kin-murders have been done. Recall to yourself so many advocacies, so many bonds of clientship, and the greatest of your benefits — the commonwealth itself: you will then understand that Cicero can be compelled to death, but cannot be compelled to prayers. ARGENTARIUS. The dainty banquets of the triumviral kingship are unfolded, and the cook-shop is furnished by the tribute of nations; he himself, flabby with wine and sleep, lifts his failing eyes to the heads of the proscribed. For these things now it is not enough to say, "A worthless fellow!"

THE DIVISION. Latro divided this suasoria thus:

8. that even if you can obtain life from Antony, it is not worth so much to beg; then, that you cannot obtain it. In that first part he set down that it was shameful for any Roman whatever, much more for Cicero, to beg for life: here he set down examples of all who of their own accord had seized death. Then: that life would be useless and worse than death, with liberty taken away: here he described all the bitterness of the slavery to come. Then: that there would be no good faith toward one who obtained the benefit: here, when he had said, "There will be something to offend Antony — either your deed, or your word, or your silence, or your face," he added the sentence: "for you are not going to please him."

9. Albucius divided otherwise: he made the first part, that Cicero must die, even if no one were to proscribe him: here was an inveighing against the times. Then: that he must die of his own accord, since he must die even if he were unwilling to die: that there were grave causes of hatred; that the greatest cause of the proscription was Cicero himself. And he alone of the declaimers tried to say that not one Antony only was hostile to him. In this place he said that sentence: "If you are not hateful to some one of the triumvirs, you are a burden." And that sentence which was greatly applauded:

10. "Beg, Cicero; prevail upon one, that you may serve three." Cestius divided thus: "to die is profitable for you, it is honourable, it is necessary, that you may complete your life free and of unblemished dignity." Here he said that bold sentence: "that you may be numbered with Cato, who could not be a slave even to Antony, not yet a master." Marcellus said this thought about Cato better: "Has everything so far been turned upside down together with the fortune of the Roman people, that anyone should deliberate whether it is better to live with Antony or to die with Cato?" But let us return to Cestius' division. He said it was profitable, that he might not suffer even torture of the body: that he would not perish in a simple way, if he had fallen into the hands of Antony. In this part, when he had described the insults of those who would mock Cicero, and the lashes and torments, he said that much-praised sentence: "Then indeed, by Hercules, Cicero, when you have come to Antony, you will beg for death."

11. Varius Geminus divided thus: "I would exhort you, if now one of two things must in any case be done — either to die or to beg — to die rather than to beg"; and he embraced all that had been said by the rest. He added a third thing too: he exhorted him to flight. There were Marcus Brutus, there Gaius Cassius, there Sextus Pompey. And he added that sentence which Cassius Severus uniquely admired: "Why do we lose heart? The commonwealth too has its own triumvirs." Then he ran through the regions he might seek: he said Sicily had been vindicated by him, Cilicia excellently administered by him as proconsul, Achaia and Asia were devoted to his pursuits, the kingdom of Deiotarus bound by his benefits, Egypt both had the memory of his kindness and was repenting of its treachery. But most of all he urged him toward Asia and Macedonia, into the camps of Cassius and Brutus. And so Cassius Severus used to say that others had declaimed, but Varius Geminus had given living counsel.

12. The other part few declaimed. No one dared exhort Cicero to entreat Antony: they judged well of Cicero's spirit. Geminus Varius declaimed the other part too, and said: "I hope I shall persuade my friend Cicero to be willing to live. That he speaks grand things, and says, 'death is neither untimely for a consular nor wretched for a wise man,' does not move me: he will not perish for all that; I know the man's character well; he will do it, he will beg. For as to slavery, he will not refuse it; his neck is already worn smooth; both Pompey and Caesar bowed it: you see a veteran chattel." And he said several other buffoonish things, as was his way.

13. He divided thus, that he said Cicero would beg neither shamefully nor in vain. In the first part he set down that it was not shameful for a conquered citizen to be entreated by a victor. Here, how many had entreated Gaius Caesar; here, even Ligarius. Then, that it was not even unfair for Cicero to make satisfaction, who had been the first to proscribe Antony, who had judged him a public enemy; that satisfaction always arises from him who acted, and that one entreats the man one has wronged. Then, that he would beg not for his life, but for the commonwealth: that he had lived enough for himself, too little for the commonwealth. In the latter part he said that enemies are wont to be prevailed upon; that he himself had been prevailed upon by Vatinius, and had appeared for Gaius even — for Verres; that Antony could be the more easily prevailed upon, who, being the third, would snatch from the other two triumvirs this so splendid occasion of clemency. That perhaps Antony was angry with him, because he had not even thought him worth so much as to entreat.

14. When he had described how perilous flight was, he added that wherever he came he must be a slave: that he must endure either the violence of Cassius, or the pride of Brutus, or the folly of Pompey. Since we have lighted upon this suasoria, I think it not out of place to show how each of the historians has borne himself toward the memory of Cicero. For that Cicero was neither so timid as to beg Antony, nor so foolish as to hope that he could be prevailed upon, no one doubts, except Asinius Pollio, who remained most hostile to Cicero's fame. And he too gave the school-men occasion for another suasoria; for the school-men are wont to declaim: "Cicero deliberates whether to burn his speeches, Antony promising him his safety on that condition."

15. This may seem to anyone an absurd fiction. Pollio wishes it to seem true; for so he said in that speech which he published for Lamia. ASINIUS POLLIO. "And so there was never any delay on Cicero's part, but that he should foreswear the speeches against Antony as his own, which he had most eagerly poured out; and he promised to publish others, manifold in number and more carefully written, contrary to them, and even himself to recite them openly before the assembly"; and he had added to these other things much more sordid, so that it might easily be plain to anyone that this whole thing was so false that not even Pollio himself dared to set it in his histories. Those who were present at this pleading of his for Lamia, at least, deny that he said these things — for he could not bear to lie within the cognizance of the triumvirs — but that he composed them afterward.

16. I do not wish you, my young men, to be saddened that I pass from the declaimers to the historians. I will give you satisfaction, and perhaps bring it about that, when these sentences have been read — solid and having truth in them — you may withdraw from the school-men: but because, if I cannot now attain this by the straight road, I shall be forced to deceive you — as one about to give boys a wholesome draught in a cup of wormwood — Livy is so far from saying that Cicero had any plan of recantation, that he denies he had time for it; for thus he says:

17. TITUS LIVY. Marcus Cicero, at the coming of the triumvirs, had left the city, holding for certain — as was the case — that he could no more be snatched from Antony than Cassius and Brutus from Caesar. First he had fled to his Tusculan villa, thence by cross-roads he set out for his Formian estate, intending to take ship from Caieta. Whence, having been carried out into the deep several times — now the contrary winds bringing him back, now himself unable to endure the tossing of the ship as the dark wave rolled — at last a weariness both of flight and of life came upon him, and, returning to the upper villa, which is a little more than a thousand paces from the sea, he said: "Let me die in the fatherland I have so often saved." It is well established that his slaves were ready to fight bravely and faithfully; but he ordered the litter set down, and them to suffer quietly what an unjust lot compelled. As he leaned out of the litter and offered his neck unmoving, his head was struck off. Nor was this enough for the soldiers' stupid cruelty: they cut off his hands too, reproaching them with having written something against Antony. So the head was brought back to Antony, and by his order placed between the two hands upon the Rostra, where, as consul, where often as a consular, where in that very year against Antony he had been heard with such admiration of his eloquence as no human voice ever was: men, scarcely lifting their eyes for tears, could not look upon the limbs of the butchered citizen.

18. Aufidius Bassus too himself doubted nothing of Cicero's spirit, but that he not only offered himself bravely to death, but presented it. AUFIDIUS BASSUS. Cicero, when, the curtain a little drawn aside, he saw the armed men, said: "I, indeed, halt: come near, veteran, and if you can do this at least rightly, cut off my neck." Then, to the man trembling and hesitating, he said: "What if you had come to me first?"

19. Cremutius Cordus too himself says that Cicero pondered with himself whether to seek Brutus, or Cassius, or Sextus Pompey, but that all displeased him save death. CREMUTIUS CORDUS. At the sight of which Antony, rejoicing — when he had said that his proscription was accomplished, since he was not only sated with slaughtering citizens but glutted — set it forth above the Rostra. And so, where most often, surrounded by an immense throng, he had come forward, where shortly before he had cultivated the people with loyal harangues by which he had saved the heads of many, then, mangled in his own limbs, he was looked upon by his fellow-citizens otherwise than was their wont, with gore sprinkled on his hanging head and face — he who shortly before was chief of the senate and the title of the Roman name, then the price paid to a murderer-slave. But chiefly the sight of his right hand fastened to his head — the minister of his divine eloquence — dissolved the hearts of all into tears and groans; and while the deaths of the rest stirred private griefs, that alone stirred a common one.

20. BRUTTEDIUS NIGER. "Cicero meanwhile, having slipped away by the other part of the villa, was being borne in a litter through the fields; but when he saw a soldier known to him, Popilius by name, drawing near, remembering that he had been defended by himself, he looked upon him with a gladder face. But the other, meaning to put this very thing to the victors' account, forestalled the crime, and carries off the severed head — of one doing nothing in the last end of his life that could be marked on either side — to Antony, forgetting that he had a little before been defended by him." And here he wished to describe the pitiable face of the head set on the Rostra,

21. but was overwhelmed by the greatness of the matter. BRUTTEDIUS NIGER. But when, by Antony's order, the head set between the two hands was beheld on the Rostra, in the place where he had so often been heard, the greatest funeral offerings were rendered to the man with groaning and weeping; nor, as is wont, did the assembly hear the life of one laid out upon the Rostra, but itself recounted it. There was no part of the forum unmarked by the trace of some famous pleading; no one but confessed some service of his toward himself: this at least was a public benefit, plain to all, that the slavery of that most wretched time, postponed from Catiline, was now brought down upon Antony. As often as the death of some great man is narrated by the historians, so often almost is a summing-up of the whole life rendered, and, as it were, a funeral eulogy. This was done once or twice by Thucydides, and likewise used for very few persons by Sallust; Titus Livy more generously bestowed it on all great men: the historians who came after did this much more lavishly. To Cicero, to use a Greek word, Livy renders this "epitaph":

22. TITUS LIVY. He lived sixty-three years, so that, had force been absent, his death could not seem even untimely. His talent was happy both in its works and in the rewards of its works; he himself, long of prosperous fortune, was in the long course of his felicity meanwhile struck with great wounds — exile, the ruin of the party for which he had stood, the so sad and bitter end of his daughter: of all these adversities he bore none as became a man save death, which, to one rightly weighing it, could seem the less undeserved, because at the hands of a victorious enemy he was to suffer nothing more cruel than he, master of the same fortune, would have done to the conquered. Yet if one should weigh his faults against his virtues, he was a great and memorable man, and for the setting forth of whose praises a Cicero would be needed as eulogist. As Titus Livy is by nature the most candid appraiser of all great talents, he rendered to Cicero a most full testimony.

23. Of Cremutius Cordus it is not worth while to report the eulogy rendered to Cicero; for nothing in it is worthy of Cordus or of Cicero — not even this, which is almost the most tolerable: CREMUTIUS CORDUS. For private enmities he thought should sometimes be laid aside, public ones never deserted: a citizen to be regarded not only for the greatness of his virtues but for the multitude of them. AUFIDIUS BASSUS. Thus Marcus Cicero passed away, a man born for the safety of the commonwealth, which, long defended and administered, at last in his old age slipped from his hands — harmed not by his own fault, but because nothing else pleased him for its safety than that it should have been rid of Antony. He lived sixty-three years in such a way that he was always either attacking another or being attacked in turn, and saw nothing more rarely than that day on which it concerned no one that he himself should die.

24. Pollio too — Asinius Pollio, who handed down that Verres, Cicero's defendant, died most bravely — alone of all narrates Cicero's death malignantly; yet, however unwillingly, he rendered him a full testimony. ASINIUS POLLIO. "Of this man, then, with so many and so great works that shall abide for every age, to proclaim aloud his talent and industry is superfluous. Nature and fortune alike were obedient to him, since indeed a comely face lasted prosperously to his old age, and his health continued sound; then a long peace befell him, in whose arts he was equipped. For when judgments were exacted with ancient severity, a very great multitude of guilty men came forth, whom, bound to him by his advocacy, he kept for the most part unharmed. Now his lot in seeking and bearing the consulship was most happy, by the counsel of the gods and his own industry. Would that he could have borne prosperity more moderately and adversity more bravely! For whenever either befell him, he thought they could not be changed. Hence storms of envy most grievous arose, and the more sure confidence of his enemies in attacking him; for he provoked enmities with a greater spirit than he carried them through. But since to no mortal has perfect virtue fallen, a man must be judged by that part on which the greater portion of his life and talent stood. And I, for my part, would not even judge his end to have been a pitiable one, had he not himself thought his death so wretched."

25. I can assure you that there is nothing in his histories more eloquent than this passage which I have reported, so that to me he seems then not to have praised Cicero, but to have contended with Cicero. Nor do I say this to deter you, lest you should desire to read his histories: desire it, and you will pay the penalty to Cicero. Yet no one of so many most eloquent men lamented Cicero's death better than Cornelius Severus.

26. "And the faces, all but breathing still, of those great-souled men lay upon their own Rostra: but the image of snatched Cicero carried off all, as though it alone were there. Then come back to men's minds the consul's mighty deeds, the sworn bands, the plot of guilt detected, the patrician sacrilege quenched: the punishment of Cethegus, and Catiline, cast down with his accursed prayers, returns. What had they availed — an age cultivated with sacred arts? One day took away the glory of a lifetime, and, smitten with grief, the sad eloquence of the Latin tongue fell silent. He who was once the sole protection and salvation of the anxious, ever the noble head of his country, he the senate's champion, he of the forum, of the laws, of right and of the toga, the public voice, fell dumb for ever before savage arms. The disfigured features, the gray hair spattered with unspeakable gore, and the sacred hands, ministers of works so great, cast down before proud feet — a citizen flung at the feet of a tyrant's slaves. He trampled it, exulting, nor did he regard the slippery fates and the gods. For this in no age shall Antony atone. This not even in Emathia did mild Victory do to Perses, nor to you, dread Syphax, had it done, nor with Philip your enemy; and from triumphed-over Jugurtha all such mockeries were absent, and fierce Hannibal, falling beneath our wrath, yet bore his limbs unviolated to the Stygian shades."

27. I will not defraud my fellow-townsman of a good verse, out of which this much better one of Cornelius Severus came: "the sad eloquence of the Latin tongue fell silent." Sextilius Ena was a man more ingenious than learned, an unequal poet, and plainly in some places such as Cicero says the poets of Corduba are, "sounding something thick and foreign." He, about to recite this very proscription in the house of Messala Corvinus, had invited Asinius Pollio, and in the opening recited this verse, not without applause: "Cicero must be wept for, and the silences of the Latin tongue." Asinius Pollio did not bear it with an even mind, and said: "Messala, you must see what is free for you in your own house: I am not going to listen to a man who thinks me dumb"; and so he rose and went out. I know that Cornelius Severus too was present at this recitation, who, it appears, was not so much displeased by this verse as Pollio was, since he himself composed one better, indeed, but not unlike it. If I stop here, I know it will come about that you stop reading at that point where I withdrew from the school-men; therefore, that you may be willing to unroll the book to the very end, I will add a suasoria like the last.

SUASORIA 7. Cicero deliberates whether to burn his writings, Antony promising him his safety if he does.

1. You will not endure Antony: in an evil nature good fortune is intolerable, and nothing inflames the covetous more than the consciousness of a prosperous baseness. It is hard; you will not endure it, I say, and again you will long to provoke your enemy to your own death. As far as concerns me, indeed, I am far removed from Cicero: yet I am not only weary of my life, but ashamed of it. Do you not love your talent even for this, that Antony hates it more than he hates you? He says he remits to you the right to live, having devised how to snatch away even what you had already lived. The bargain of Antony is crueller than his proscription. There was a talent over which the triumviral arms could have no right. Antony has devised how that which he could not proscribe with Cicero might be proscribed by Cicero. I would exhort you, Cicero, to set a high value on life, if liberty had its place in the city, if eloquence had its place in liberty, if necks did not pay the price with the civil sword; now, that you may know nothing is better than to die, Antony promises you life. The tablet of the abominable proscription hangs up: so many of praetorian rank, so many consulars, so many men of the equestrian order have perished; none is left save him who can be a slave. I know not whether at this time you wish to live, Cicero: there is no one with whom you would wish to. Rightly, by Hercules, did you live in that time when Caesar of his own accord asked you to live, without any bargain — at which time the commonwealth, indeed, did not stand, but had fallen into the bosom of a good prince.

2. CESTIUS PIUS. Has my opinion at all deceived me? Antony has understood that, the monuments of his eloquence safe, Cicero cannot die. You are called to a bargain by which the better part of you is sought. Lend me a little your eloquence: I am begging that Cicero may perish. If Caesar and Pompey had listened to you, they would neither have entered upon a shameful partnership nor broken it off: if ever they had wished to use your counsel, neither would Pompey have deserted Caesar nor Caesar Pompey. What of the consulship that brought safety to the city, what of an exile more honourable than a consulship, what of the Sullan power challenged at the very beginning of your youth by the liberty of your apprenticeship, what of Antony torn from Catiline and restored to the commonwealth?

3. Forgive me, Cicero, if I tell these things at length: perhaps on this day they are heard for the last time. If Cicero is to be killed, he will lie among Pompey the father and the son, and Afranius, Petreius, Quintus Catulus, that Marcus Antonius unworthy of this successor of his race; if he is to be saved, he will live among the Ventidii and the Canidii and the Saxae: is it then doubtful whether it is better to lie with those, or to live with these? For one man you bargain away a public loss. I know that every price he has set is unjust: I do not buy Cicero's life at so much as Antony sells it. If he offered you this bargain — "you shall live, but your eyes shall be torn out; you shall live, but your feet shall be crippled" — even if you showed patience under the other damages of the body, you would still have made exception of your tongue. Where is that sacred voice of yours: "for death is the end of nature, not a punishment"? Is this alone not clear to you? But it seems you have persuaded Antony of it. Claim yourself rather for liberty, and add one charge to your enemy: by dying, make Antony the guiltier.

4. PUBLIUS ASPRENAS. That Antony may spare Cicero, shall Cicero himself take vengeance upon his own eloquence? And what is promised you under that bargain? That Gnaeus Pompey and Marcus Cato and that old senate be restored to the commonwealth — the senate most worthy that before it Cicero should speak? Many, often destined to live, the contempt of their own spirit has crushed; many, destined to perish, the very admiration of a spirit ready to perish has snatched away, and to die bravely was for them a cause of living. Make a promise to the Roman people against Antony. Though you have burned your writings, Antony promises you a few years; but if you have not burned them, the fame of the Roman people promises you all.

5. POMPEIUS SILO. What sort of thing is it, that we should lose the eloquence of Cicero, and follow the good faith of Antony? Do you call this mercy — the punishment exacted of Cicero's genius? Let us trust Antony, Cicero, if the money-lenders did well to trust him their money, if Brutus and Cassius did well to trust him the peace. A man maddened both by a fault of nature and by the licence of the times, rioting amid stage-loves in civil blood; a man who pawned the commonwealth to his creditors, whose gluttony the goods of two princes, Caesar and Pompey, could not satisfy! I will use your own words, Cicero: "Is safety dear to anyone which Antony can either give or take away?"

6. It is not worth so much to be saved, Cicero, that being saved I should owe it to Antony. TRIARIUS. The Roman people was once driven into such straits that it had nothing left save Jupiter besieged and Camillus in exile: yet there was no work of Camillus greater than this, that he thought it unworthy that men should owe their safety to a bargain. O grievous life, even if it were given without a price! Antony, judged a public enemy by the commonwealth, now judges the commonwealth a public enemy. Lepidus — lest anyone think he pleased Antony ill as a colleague — ever an appendage to another's madness, the chattel of each colleague, is our master.

7. ARGENTARIUS. Nothing must be trusted to Antony — I am lying. For what cannot that man do who can kill Cicero, who cannot save him save more cruelly than he was killing? Do you think he forgives you, who is angry with your talent? From him do you hope for life, from whom your words have not yet faded? That a body, which is fragile and falling, may be saved, shall the talent perish, which is eternal? I should have marvelled, had not the pardon of Antony been the crueller.

8. Publius Scipio, deserting from his own forefathers, a noble death restored to the number of the Scipios. He remits death to you, that there may perish that which alone in you is immortal. What sort of bargain is it? Cicero's talent is taken from him without his life; in exchange for the oblivion of your name a few years of slavery are promised. He does not wish you to live, but to be silent — the survivor of your own talent. Live, that Cicero may hear Lepidus, may hear Antony — no one Cicero. Can you bear that the best part Cicero has should be carried out to burial before his face? Suffer rather your talent to endure after you — a perpetual proscription of Antony. ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father. As long as the human race shall remain unharmed, as long as letters keep their honour and eloquence its reward, as long as the fortune of our commonwealth shall stand, or its memory endure, your admirable talent shall flourish to posterity, and, proscribed in one age, you will proscribe Antony in all. Believe me, that is the most worthless part of you which can be either snatched from you or given to you: that is the true Cicero whom Antony thinks cannot be proscribed save by Cicero.

9. He does not remit to you the proscription, but desires his own to be removed. If Antony deceives your good faith, you will die; if he keeps it, you will be a slave. As far as concerns me, I prefer that he deceive you. By you, Marcus Tullius — by the sixty-four years honourably passed, by the consulship that brought safety to the commonwealth, by the eternal memory of your talent, if you suffer it, by the commonwealth which (lest you think you leave anything dear to it) perished before you — I beg and beseech you: do not die having confessed that you were unwilling to die.

10. The other part of this suasoria I know no one declaimed; all were anxious for the books of Cicero, none for Cicero himself, although that part is not so bad but that Cicero, had this condition been offered him, would not have deliberated. And so no one declaimed this suasoria more effectively than Silo Pompeius: for he did not betake himself to those showy points to which Cestius went, who said that this was a heavier punishment than death, and that for this reason Antony chose it; that life was short for all, much more for an old man: so that thought must be taken for memory, which promised eternity to great men; that life must not be redeemed at any price you please. Here the intolerable conditions; that all things rather be undergone than that he himself should burn up the monuments of his own talent. That he would do an injury to the Roman people, whose tongue he had raised to the chief place, so that he surpassed the studies of insolent Greece by as much in eloquence as in fortune; that he would do an injury to the human race. That he would come to repent of a breath so dearly bought, when he must grow old in slavery and use his eloquence for this one thing — to praise Antony. That he was ill dealt with: life was given him, his talent snatched away.

11. Silo Pompeius pleaded so as to say that Antony was not bargaining, but mocking: that this was no condition, but an insult; for, the books burned, he would none the less kill him; that Antony was not so foolish as to think it mattered to the matter that the books should be burned by Cicero, whose writings were celebrated throughout the whole world, nor was he seeking what he could do himself: unless, perchance, he who had a right over Cicero had no right over Cicero's writings; that nothing else was sought than that this Cicero, who had spoken many brave things about the contempt of death, being led to shameful conditions, might be killed. That Antony was not promising him life with a condition, but seeking his death under infamy. And so what he was afterward going to suffer shamefully, he ought now to suffer bravely. And this suasoria was marked . . . for he said a sentence in the lowest and most sordid kind of affectation — which by the subtraction or addition of a syllable makes its point: "O unworthy crime! Shall what Cicero wrote perish, and what Antony proscribed remain?"

12. Before Cestius Pius the rhetor, Surdinus declaimed this suasoria, an ingenious young man, by whom Greek plays were elegantly turned into Latin speech. He used to say sweet sentences, but more often over-sweet and effeminate. In this suasoria, when he had embraced an oath in some fine preceding thoughts, he added: "so may I read you." Cestius, a most keen-nosed man, pretended not to have heard, that he might rebuke the well-furnished young man as though unawares: "What did you say? What? So may I enjoy you?" Now Cestius was a lover of no man's talent, and hostile even to Cicero, which did not pass for him unpunished.

13. For when Marcus Tullius, the son of Cicero, was governing Asia — a man who had nothing of his father's talent save his wit — Cestius was dining with him. Nature had taken memory from Marcus Tullius, and drunkenness withdrew whatever was left of it; again and again he would ask what that man was called who reclined in the lowest place, and when the name of Cestius, supplied to him, had often slipped away, at last a slave, that by some mark he might make his memory more certain, said to his master as he asked who that was who reclined in the lowest place: "This is Cestius who used to say your father knew no letters"; he ordered the lashes brought quickly, and Cestius, as was fitting, made satisfaction to Cicero out of his own hide.

14. Now he was a brawler even where filial duty did not require it. To the son of Hybreas, a most eloquent man, who was pleading a case ill before him, he said: "What, then? Are you not your father's son?" And when, in a certain motion, Hybreas was delivering a whole passage of his father's word for word, all recognizing it, "Come now," he said, "do you not think I have learned my father's 'How long, then, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?'" Gargonius, a most worthless man, said in this suasoria two things than which not even he himself had ever said stupider; one in the opening: for when he had begun, in the now most frequent fashion of the school-men, with an oath, and had said much, he said: "so may he as soon as possible fear as much as he can, so may Cicero either wholly live or wholly die, as I will, by no bargain, blot out what I shall today have said for Cicero's talent." The other thing he said when he was reporting examples of those who had bravely perished: "Juba and Petreius ran upon each other with mutual wounds and lent out their deaths at interest."