that respecting these games; who is there who does not confess that the whole of that answer and prophecy was delivered with reference to that fellow’s games?
XIV. The answer about sacred and holy places comes next. Oh, the marvellous impudence of the man! do you dare to make mention of my house? Entrust your own to the consuls, or the senate, or the college of pontiffs; and mine, as I have said before, has been declared by all these three decisions to be free from all religious liability. But in that house which you keep possession of, after having slain Quintus Seius, a Roman knight and most excellent man, in the most open manner, I say that there was a shrine and altars. I will prove and establish this fact by the registers of the censors, and by the recollection of many individuals. Only let this question be discussed, (and it must be referred to you by virtue of that resolution of the senate which has lately been passed,) and I have plenty to say on the subject of religious places. When I have spoken of your house,—in which, however, a chapel has been built up in such a way that another built it, and you have only got to pull it down,—then I will see whether it is necessary for me to speak also of other places. For some people think that it belongs to me to open the armoury of the temple of Tellus. They say that it is not long ago that it was open, and I recollect it myself. Now they say that the most holy part of it, and the place entitled to the greatest reverence, is occupied by a private vestibule. There are many considerations which influence me,—namely, this, that the temple of Tellus is put particularly under my care; and that he who took away that armoury said that my house, which was declared free by the decision of the pontiffs, had been adjudged to his brother. I am influenced also at this time of dearness of provisions, of barrenness of the lands, and of scarcity of the crops, by the reverence due to Tellus; and all the more, because, on account of this same prodigy, an atonement is said to be due to Tellus. Perhaps we are speaking of old stones; although, if this is not laid down in the civil law, still by the law of nature and the common rights of nations the principle has been established, that mortals cannot acquire a prescriptive right to anything as against the immortal gods.
XV. But we will pass over all things of old date. Shall we also pass over those things which are done at the present time; which we see ourselves? Who knows not that Lucius Piso at this very time has been removing a great and most holy chapel of Diana on the Cœliculan hill? Men who live close to that spot are in court. There are many even belonging to this body, who once a-year have regularly performed the sacrifices of their family in that very chapel, in their appointed place. And do we ask what places the immortal gods are regretting; what it is they are meaning, of what it is that they are speaking? Are we ignorant that some most holy chapels were undermined, blocked up, knocked down, and defiled in the most unseemly possible manner? Were you able to render my house the property of the gods? With what feelings? You have lost all feeling. With what hand? With that with which you pulled it down. With what voice? With that with which you ordered it to be set on fire. By what law? By one which you did not venture to propose even at the time when you were doing everything with impunity. With what cushion? That which you polluted with your adulteries. With what image? That which you took off from a harlot’s tomb and placed on the monument of a general. What has my house which is connected with anything religious, except that it touches the wall of an impious and sacrilegious man? Therefore that none of my people may be able unintentionally to look into your house, I will raise the roof higher; not in order that I may look down upon you, but that you may not be able to see that city which you were desirous to destroy.
XVI. But let us now examine the rest of the clauses of the answers of the soothsayers.—“That ambassadors have been slain contrary to all divine and human law.” What is this? I see here a mention of the deputies from Alexandria; and I cannot refute it. For my feelings are, that the privileges of ambassadors are not only fenced round by human protection, but are also guarded by divine laws. But I ask of that man, who, as tribune, filled the forum with judges whom he took out of the prisons,—by whose will every dagger is now guided and every cup of poison dispensed,—who has made a regular bargain with Hermarchus of Chios,—whether he is at all aware that one most active adversary of Hermarchus, of the name of Theodosius, having been sent as ambassador to the senate from a free city, was assassinated with a dagger? and I know to a certainty that that cannot have appeared less scandalous to the immortal gods than the case of the Alexandrians. Nor am I now attributing every action of this sort to you alone. There would be greater hope of safety if there were no other wicked man but you; but there are more, and on this account you feel more confidence, and we almost distrust the protection of the law. Who is there who is not aware that Plato, a man of high character and high rank in his own country, came from Orestis, which is a free part of Macedonia, to Thessalonica, as an ambassador to our general, as he called himself? and this great general of ours, being angry at not being able to extort money from him, threw him into prison, and sent his own physician to him, who in a most infamous and barbarous manner cut the veins of an ambassador, an ally, a friend, and a freeman. He did not wish his own forces to be made bloody by crime; but he polluted the name of the Roman people with such guilt that it cannot be expiated by any means but his own punishment. What sort of executioner must we think that this man has in his train, when he uses even his physicians not to procure health but to inflict death?
XVII. But let us read what follows. “That good faith and oaths have been disregarded.” What this means by itself, I cannot easily explain; but from that which follows I suspect that it refers to the manifest perjury of your judges, from whom, some time ago, the money which they had received would have been taken away, if they had not entreated the protection of the senate. And this is the reason why I imagine that they are the persons alluded to, because I lay it down as a fact, that that is the most remarkable and notorious perjury ever committed in this city, and yet that you yourself are not threatened with the punishment of perjury by those men with whom you conspired.
And I see that in the answers of the soothsayers this is added: “That the ancient and secret sacrifices have been performed with less than due diligence, and have been polluted.” Are they the soothsayers who say this, or the gods of our country and our household gods? I suppose there are many persons to whom a suspicion of this guilt attaches;—who but this one man? Is it mentioned obscurely what sacrifices have been polluted? What can be expressed in a plainer, more dignified, or more solemn manner? “Ancient and secret.” I say that Lentulus, a dignified and eloquent orator, did not, when he was accusing you, make use of any expressions more frequently than these, which now are extracted from the Etruscan books, and turned against and applied to you. In truth, what sacrifice is there so ancient as this, which we have received from the kings, and which is contemporary with the city itself? But what is so secret as that which excludes not only all curious eyes, but even all accidental ones? which not only no wickedness, but which even no unintentional chance can penetrate? That sacrifice no one, ever since the world began, has ever profaned, no one has ever approached, no one has ever disregarded, no man has ever thought of beholding without horror, before Publius Clodius. It is performed by the vestal virgins; it is performed on behalf of the Roman people; it is performed in the house of a supreme magistrate; it is performed with incredible solemnity; it is performed to that goddess whose very name it is not lawful for men to know, and whom that fellow calls Good, because she has pardoned him such enormous wickedness.
XVIII. She has not pardoned you, believe me. No; unless, perchance, you think yourself pardoned because the judges dismissed you, after they had squeezed and drained everything out of you, acquitted by their decision, condemned by all the rest of the citizens; or because you have not been deprived of your eyes, as is, according to the common belief, the consequence of such impiety. For what man ever intentionally beheld those sacred rites before you, so as to enable any one to know what punishment followed that guilt? Could the blindness of your eyes be a greater injury to you than that blindness of your lust? Do not even you feel that those winking eyes of your ancestor Ref. 024 were more desirable for you than these glowing eyes of your sister? But, if you observe carefully, you will see that though you have as yet escaped the punishment of men, you have not escaped that of the gods. Men have defended you in a most shameful affair; men have praised you though most infamous and most guilty; men, for a bribe, have acquitted you by their decision, though you all but confessed your guilt; men have felt no indignation at the
