is
character had no power to do anything revolutionary. What trouble did he
have that would have been cured by the change of condition? What blessing
did he possess that would not certainly be jeopardized by rebellion? What
arms had he collected, what allies had he equipped, that a man who had
been consul and was praetor should be so pitilessly and impiously cast
into a cell without being allowed to say a word of defence or hear a
single charge, and die there like the basest criminals? For this is what
this excellent Tullius most of all desired,--that in [the Tullianum,] the
place that bears his name, he might put to death the grandson of that
Lentulus once became the head of the senate. [-21-] What would he
have done if he had obtained authority to bear arms, seeing that he
accomplished so many things of such a nature by his words alone? These
are your brilliant achievements, these are your great exhibitions of
generalship; and not only were you condemned for them by the rest, but
you were so ready to vote against your own self in the matter that you
fled before your trial came on. Yet what greater demonstration of your
bloodguiltiness could there be than that you came in danger of perishing
at the hands of those very persons in whose behalf you pretended you had
done this, that you were afraid of the very ones whom you said you had
benefited by these acts, and that you did not wait to hear from them or
say a word to them, you clever, you extraordinary man, you aider of other
people, but secured your safety by flight as if from a battle? And you
are so shameless that you have undertaken to write a history of these
events that I have related, whereas you ought to have prayed that no
other man even should give an account of any of them: then you might at
least derive this advantage, that your doings should die with you and no
memory of them be transmitted to posterity. Now, gentlemen, if you want
to laugh, listen to his clever device. He set himself the task of writing
a history of the entire existence of the city (for he pretends to be a
sophist and poet and philosopher and orator and historian), and he began
not from the founding of it, like the rest are similarly busied, but from
his own consulship, so that he might proceed backwards, making that the
beginning of his account, and the kingdom of Romulus the end.

[-22-] "Tell me now, you who write such things and do such things, what
the excellent man ought to say in po