idst of those heartless
Romans, is expected to have the polished manners and high feelings of a
modern politician! I have hardly a right to be angry with his critics
because by his life he went so near to justify the expectation.

He begins by asking his supposed hearers how it has come to pass that
during the last twenty years the Republic had had no enemy who was not
also his enemy. "And you, Antony, whom I have never injured by a word,
why is it that, more brazen-faced than Catiline, more fierce than
Clodius, you should attack me with your maledictions? Will your enmity
against me be a recommendation for you to every evil citizen in Rome?
* * * Why does not Antony come down among us to-day?" he says, as though
he were in the Senate and Antony were away. "He gives a birthday fete in
his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps,
or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not
to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy--the Nyms.
Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but
mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says--Antony having
twitted him with the "cedant arma togae." "I will only say that you do
not understand them or any other. Clodius was killed by my counsels--was
he? What would men have said had they seen him running from you through
the Forum--you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of
the bookseller's shop?[206] * * * It was by my advice that Caesar was
killed! I fear, O conscript fathers, lest I should seem to have employed
some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me.
Who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that
glorious affair? Among those who did do the deed, whose name has been
hidden--or, indeed, is not most widely known? Some had been inclined to
boast that they were there, though they were absent; but not one who was
present has ever endeavored to conceal his name."

"You deny that I have had legacies? I wish it were true, for then my
friends might still be living. But where have you learned that, seeing
that I have inherited twenty million sesterces?[207] I am happier in
this than you. No one but a friend has made me his heir. Lucius Rubrius
Cassinas, whom you never even saw, has named you." He here refers to a
man over whose property Antony was supposed to have obtained control
fraudulently. "Did he know of you whether you were a wh