Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Domo Sua/ In His House, 57BCE pt2

History’s Great Speeches

I realise, gentlemen, that I have dwelt upon matters extraneous to the point at issue at greater length than the general feeling, or indeed my own inclination, would approve; but I desired to be absolved of blame in your eyes, and, at the same time, the attentive hearing you have been good enough to lend me has induced me to extend the scope of my speech. I will, however, make amends for this by the brevity I shall observe in my treatment of the matter which is actually submitted to you for inquiry; and since this is divided between a religious issue and a political issue, I shall pass over the section dealing with religion, which is much more diffuse than the other, and deal with the political issue.

For what act could be so presumptuous as to endeavour to instruct the Pontifical College in religion, in our relation to the divine powers, in ritual, or in sacrifice; or so foolish, as to recount to you discoveries that have been made in your own books; or so officious, as to wish to know matters whereon our ancestors desired that you should be the sole referees and the sole experts? I assert that it was impossible, according to public equity and the constitution enjoyed by the state, for any citizen, without a trial, to have such disaster inflicted upon him as that in question; that this right existed in this state even in the days of the kings, that it has been bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and is, finally, the peculiar mark of a free community, - the right, I mean, in accordance with which it is unlawful for any abatement of civic privilege or private property to be made without a verdict of senate, of people, or of the courts constituted to deal with each type of offence.

Do you observe that I am not trying to annul all your proceedings root and branch? that I am not, in face of obvious realities, trying to prove that you have never once acted in accordance with right, or that you never were tribune of the plebs, or that you are to-day a patrician? It is the Pontifical College that I am addressing, and the augurs are present; the very atmosphere which I breathe is one of public equity.

What, gentlemen, is the law relating to adoption? Clearly that the adoption of children should be permissible to those who are no longer capable of begetting children, and who, when they were in their prime, put their capacity for parenthood to the test. What pleas, then, what considerations of family, of credit, or of religion justify an adoption in any individual case, - this is the question commonly asked by the Pontifical College. Which of these was looked for in your case? A man twenty years of age or even less adopts a senator. Is it because he desires a child? But he is in a position to beget one. He has a wife; he will still rear children by her; and the father, by the act of adoption, will disinherit his son. Again, why should the religious traditions of the Clodii be extinguished, so far as you can extinguish them? On this inquiry the whole attention of the pontiffs should have been centred when you were adopted, unless, indeed, the information they looked for from you was whether you wished to throw the state into the turmoil of civil strife, and whether your reason for being adopted was not that you might become the son of your adopter, but that, by becoming tribune of the plebs, you might turn the state upside down. No doubt you replied that such was your desire. The Pontifical College thought your reason a just one, and gave their sanction. The age of the adopting party was never inquired into, as it was in the case of Gnaeus Aufidius and Marcus Pupius, who, as I recollect, in extreme old age, respectively adopted Orestes and Piso, and these adoptions, as in countless other cases, were followed by the adopted party inheriting the name, the wealth, and the family rites of his adopter. You are not a Fonteius, as you should be by rights, nor have you become the heir of your father by adoption, nor have you entered upon the rites of the family into which you have been adopted, to take the place of the paternal rites you have resigned. So, with the subversion of sacred rites, the pollution of families, of that which you have left as well as of that which you have contaminated, and with the scouting of the legally prescribed terms of wardship and inheritance among our citizens, you have set nature at defiance, and have become the son of a man whose father you might have been, on the score of your relative ages.

Speaking as I do in the presence of the Pontifical College, I assert that your adoption did not take place in accordance with pontifical rules: firstly, because your relative ages are such that your adopter might, in respect of this, have stood to you in the relation of a son, or in the relation in which he actually did stand to you; and secondly, because the reason why a sufficient cause for the adoption is customarily required is that the adopter may be one who seeks to gain by the statutory and pontifical laws what he can no longer gain in the course of nature, and that the method of adoption may be such that neither the dignity of the families nor the sanctity of religion suffers any detraction; but the chief reason is, to preclude the employment of chicanery, fraud, or subterfuge, and to enable this artificial expedient of adoption to reproduce as nearly as possible the responsibilities of actual parenthood.

What more striking example of evasion than that a beardless stripling, married and in excellent health, should come before you and say that he wishes to adopt as his son a senator of the Roman people, and that all should be perfectly aware of and awake to the fact that the motive of the adoption was not that the adopted party might become the son of the adopter, but that he might leave the patrician body and so be in a position to become tribune of the plebs? And he took no trouble to conceal his motive; for no sooner had he been adopted than he was emancipated, that he might not continue to be the son of his adopter. What, then, was the adopter's motive? Do but once sanction this form of adoption, and you will find in a very short while that all family religion, for the protection of which you are responsible, will die out, and not a patrician will be left. For why should a man acquiesce in his ineligibility to election as tribune of the plebs, in limited chances of successful candidature for the consulship, and in his inability, owing to the fact that such a position is not open to a patrician, to be appointed to a priesthood, when he has a possibility of removing that inability? Similar adoptions will take place in future whenever circumstances render it more advantageous to a man to be a plebeian; and the result will be that in a short time the Roman people will have no Rex Sacrorum, no flamens, no Salii, and it will lose half its remaining priests, and will be without any authoritative conveners for the Centuriate and Curiate assemblies; while, if patrician magistrates are not elected, the auspices of the Roman people will inevitably vanish, for there will be no interrex, inasmuch as that officer is bound to be a patrician and to be appointed by patricians. I have stated in the presence of the pontiffs that your adoption was sanctioned by no decree of this College, was entered upon in defiance of all pontifical regulations, and must be held to be null and void; and you must realise that, your adoption invalidated, your whole tribunate falls to the ground.

I proceed now to the augurs, into whose books, such of them at least as are secret, I forbear to pry. I am not curious to inquire into augural regulations. There are some, however, of which I share the knowledge with the populace, which have often been revealed, in answer to inquiry, in mass meetings, and with these I am familiar. These assert that proceedings in assembly are sacrilegious when observation of the heavens is in progress. Have you the audacity to deny that such observation was in progress on the day when, as is asserted, the law dealing with your case was passed in the Curiate assembly? We have with us to-day Marcus Bibulus, a gentleman of exceptional uprightness, firmness of will, and seriousness of purpose; he, as consul, had, I affirm, on that very day undertaken observation of the heavens. ''Do you then," asks Clodius, " invalidate the gallant Caesar's proceedings" By no means; for none of them any longer affect my interests, with the exception of those measures of his which were aimed with hostile intent against my own person. But it was you who treated the auspices, which I do but lightly touch upon, in this way. It was you who, in your already tottering and emasculated tribunate, suddenly stood forth as the protector of the auspices; you who brought Marcus Bibulus and the augurs before the mass meeting; it was in reply to your inquiries that the augurs answered that proceedings in assembly are sacrilegious when observation of the heavens is in progress; it was your question that Marcus Bibulus met by an assertion that he had observed the heavens, and also stated at a mass meeting, before which he was brought by your brother Appius, that you were not a tribune at all, inasmuch as you had been adopted in defiance of the auspices. You, finally, were responsible for all the agitation of the ensuing months in favour of the repeal by the senate of the whole of Gaius Caesar's proceedings, on the ground that they had been carried out in defiance of the same auspices; and you said that, in the event of their repeal, you would bring me back to the city shoulder-high as the city's preserver. What lunacy in the fellow! Why, his own tribunate held him fettered to Caesar's measures!

If the pontiffs use the law of ritual, and the augurs the sanctity of the auspices, wherewith to overthrow your entire tribunate, for what more do you look? Is there anything in public equity or statutory law which is more self-evident? It was perhaps at the sixth hour of the day that, in a trial where I was defending my colleague Gaius Antonius, I complained of certain political abuses, which I thought affected my unhappy client's case. These complaints were reported by scoundrels to certain worthy gentlemen in terms very far removed from those which I had used. At the ninth hour on that same day your adoption took place. If an interval of three hours is sufficient, in the case of an adoption, to correspond to the three weeks that must elapse in all other legislation, then I make no word of protest. But if that interval is of universal compulsion, I would point out that the senate pronounced that the laws of Marcus Drusus were not binding upon the people, because they were passed in defiance of the laws of Caecilius and Didius.

Perhaps by this time you realise that by every description of law, the laws of ritual, of the auspices, and of the constitution, you were never tribune of the plebs. But I waive all this, not without good reason. For I note that certain very eminent men, leading spirits in the state, have on several occasions pronounced that you would have been within your rights in bringing the matter before an assembly of the people; and these also have asserted, with reference to myself, that though the introduction of your measure marked the obsequies of the dead republic, yet nevertheless that death was legally inflicted, painful and distressing though it was. In that the measure you had passed was directed against a citizen and a benefactor of the state, you had, in their opinion, signed the state's death-warrant; but in that it was passed without violence to the auspices, you had not transgressed the law. So I think that we may be permitted to allow the validity of those enactments on which your tribunate is based, and which have won for it the sanction of such good judges.

But let us freely grant that your tribunate was as securely grounded upon equity and law as was that of Publius Servilius himself, who is present, a man of universal distinction and honour. Still, on what equitable principle, what tradition, or what precedent, did you base the express measure you passed concerning the civil status of an uncondemned citizen? Those laws the violation of which involves a curse, as well as the Twelve Tables, forbid the passing of measures which assail private individuals; for such a measure is a "privilege." No one has ever passed such measures; for no act could be more cruel, more mischievous, more abhorrent to the sense of our community. What is the most notable title possessed by the unhappy word proscription, and by all the anguish which accompanied the régime of Sulla, to be perpetuated in the annals of savagery? Surely the fact that, without a trial, penalties were enacted against expressly named Roman citizens.

Will you then, gentlemen, by the official pronouncement of your verdict in open court, grant to a tribune of the plebs the power of proscribing whom he wishes? For what else, I ask, if not proscription, do these words involve: "That it may please you, and that you may command, that Marcus Tullius be no more a citizen, and that his goods be mine"? For this was the effect, if not the actual phrase, of his enactment. Is this a resolution of the people, this a law, this a bill? Can you endure, can the state tolerate this, that the mere stroke of a pen should suffice to erase the name of a citizen from the roll? For myself, I have already played out my part; I fear no more violence, no more assaults; I have glutted the intent of envy; I have appeased the hatred of the malevolent; I have gorged to repletion the treachery and wickedness of traitors; and, lastly, my cause, which profligate citizens thought was set as a mark for their rancour to shoot at, has now had verdict pronounced upon it by all cities, all classes, and all gods and men.

It is for you, gentlemen, to take such measures for yourselves, your children, and your fellow-citizens, as shall be in keeping with your dignity and your wisdom. For on the one hand, the popular courts established by our ancestors are carefully regulated, first to prevent personal penalties being inflicted conjointly with financial penalties, secondly to prevent the accusation of anyone without notice being given, but demanding that the magistrate shall lay his accusation thrice, with an interval of a day between each accusation, before he inflicts a fine or gives his verdict, while the fourth accusation shall convey an intimation that the trial will take place three days from the day on which it is laid; and, on the other hand, defendants are conceded many opportunities of procuring sympathy and arousing favour; the populace is always susceptible of entreaty, and it is easy to make interest with a view to acquittal; and finally, if the day named is cancelled by reason of unfavourable, auspices or on any other pretext, the whole process and the trial itself are also cancelled. Seeing that these regulations apply in a case where there is a formal charge, an accuser, and witnesses, what can be more outrageous than that hirelings, assassins, ne'er-do-wells, and scoundrels should give a vote upon the civil status, the children, and the whole fortunes of one who has not been ordered to come up for trial nor arraigned nor accused, and that this vote should be held to be a law?

And if so great were his powers against me, though I was protected by official position, a great reputation, a good cause, and considerations of public weal, whose property, lastly, was not coveted, and whose sole embarrassment was the perturbed conditions and general downward tendency of the times, what is likely to be the fate of those who have passed lives secluded from the honours that the people can bestow and from a dazzling popularity, but whose wealth is considerable enough to be lusted after by too many of our spendthrift and penniless nobility?

Once grant this licence to a tribune of the plebs, and if you will but take a mental survey of our rising generation, and especially of those whose evil ambitions lead them even now to cast greedy eyes upon the tribunician power, I do most solemnly warn you that whole boards of tribunes of the plebs will appear, ready to conspire with such men for the property of wealthy persons, especially when their hoped-for booty is destined for the mob and there is a prospect of a general bounty.

But what did the expert and astute formulator of laws enact? "That it may please you, that you may command, that Marcus Tullius be interdicted from fire and water?" A cruel, a shocking measure this, and one not to be tolerated, be the citizen who is its victim never so far gone in crime! But the actual phrase was not "that he be interdicted." How then did it run? "That an interdict have been passed upon him." O abominable and monstrous wickedness! Behold! Clodius has formulated a law for you in phrase more vile than his own vile tongue, for he enacts that an interdict have been passed upon one upon whom an interdict has not been passed! I ask your kind pardon, my good Sextus, since you have lately turned logician, and are smacking your lips over your performances in this direction as well as in others, but is it possible to propose to the assembly, or to ratify in any form of words, or to corroborate by vote, an enactment enjoining the existence of a state of affairs which does not exist?' This was the man, fouler than all two-footed or even all four-footed creatures, whom you employed as secretary, expert adviser, and righthand man, for the destruction of the republic; and yet you were not so senseless and so infatuated as not to know that it was Clodius' part to act in defiance of the laws, and the business of others to formulate them. But you had no power of command over any of these, or indeed over any others, who had any vestige of self-respect; you were unable to employ either as legal secretaries or as architects those whom others were accustomed so to employ; you could not consult the pontiff whom you desired; and, finally, even in the distribution of your booty you could find no agent, and no sponsor, outside the muster of your gladiators, and none save a thief and an assassin to put your proscriptive measure to the vote.

So when, in the heyday of your affluence and power, you were flitting, a public prostitute, through the midst of the forum, your fine friends, who owed solely to their friendship with you their safety and their wealth, were so disgusted that they even lost the votes of your Palatine tribe; while those who were engaged in lawsuits, whether as accusers or accused, suffered an adverse verdict if you interceded on their behalf. And finally, your neophyte Ligur, whose signature and subservience were at your disposal for a consideration, disappointed in the will of his brother, Marcus Papirius, and unsuccessful in his litigation, expressed a desire to avenge his brother's death. He laid a charge against Sextus Propertius; but, fellow-victim as he was of the unscrupulous ascendancy of another, he did not dare to pursue his action, as he feared to be arraigned for bad faith. We have been speaking of this law on the assumption that its proposal was in order, and yet whoever touched it even remotely with the tip of a finger, with a single word, a single penny of perquisite, or a single vote, whatever point of it he approached, retired from the encounter discomfited and baffled.

But what if your proscription was made in such terms that it destroys itself? It runs, "inasmuch as Marcus Tullius has adduced a spurious decree of the senate." Well, if he did adduce a spurious decree, then your bill stands; if not, it is nullified. Do you think that the senate has not stated with sufficient clearness that so far from having falsified the authority of that order, I was actually the one man who obeyed the senate with a scrupulousness unknown since the city's foundation? By how many methods can I demonstrate that the measure of yours which you call a law was none at all? Furthermore, even though you did pass a measure dealing with several matters by a single casting of lots, do you in spite of this think that you, a man stained with every form of crime and debauchery, could win, with such men as Decumus and Clodius to back you, what the exemplary Marcus Drusus failed in many of his enactments to win, even with the expert advice of Marcus Scaurus and Lucius Crassus?

In your measure you forbade that anyone should give me shelter, not that I should leave the city; for not even you could assert that I had no right to be at Rome. For what could you say? That I had been condemned? Assuredly not that. Banished, then? How could that have been permissible? But the law did not even contain a clause ordering me to leave; penalties are enacted against all who harboured me, and these penalties were universally set at naught; there is no mention anywhere of my being turned out. But, granting that you are right in this, what of your supervision of public constructions? What of your posting of your name? Do you think that these amount to anything short of the plundering of my property? This is quite apart from the fact that even your appointing yourself to an administrative office was prohibited by the law of Licinius. Again, to come to the actual plea you are now offering to the pontiffs, that you have consecrated my house, that you have erected a monument in my private apartment, and dedicated a statue, and that you have done all this on the strength of one puny bill, - do you think that this plea is inseparable from and identical with your measure dealing expressly with myself? Yes, they were as inseparable, no doubt, as were the measures which, on another occasion, you embodied in the same law, enacting that the king of Cyprus, whose ancestors were always friends and allies of this people, should be disposed of, with all his property, by the auctioneer, and that the exiles should be restored to Byzantium. "But," he objects, "I entrusted the execution of the measures to the same person." But supposing he had entrusted to one individual the duties, first of dunning for silver 'Ark-bearers' in Asia, then of going to Spain, had then allowed him to stand for the consulship after his departure for Rome, and, after his election, had given him the province of Syria; would all these be a single matter, just because the law in which they were embodied had reference to a single person?

If the Roman people had been consulted upon the subject at the time, instead of everything being done through the medium of slaves and robbers, is it not conceivable that, while accepting the measure dealing with the king of Cyprus, the people might have rejected that which dealt with the Byzantine exiles? What other force or significance, pray, has the law of Caecilius and Didius but this, that the people may not be called upon, by voting on several matters in gross, either to accept what it dislikes, or refuse what it wants?

Furthermore, if you employed force to carry your measure, is it, in spite of this, a law? Do you think that the result of any operation which might has effected can be thought to be founded upon right? Or if at the actual voting, when the city was in your hands, there was throwing of stones, but no actual fighting, could you on that account have brought about the ruin and destruction of the state, without a resort to extreme violence?