The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [315]
25. Had obtained the office of tribune against law, and therefore nothing done by him was valid.
26. Cato was displeased at this, and opposed Cicero, not that he commended Clodius,
27. Yet he argued that it was irregular for the senate to vote the illegality of so many decrees,
28. Including those of Cato’s own government in Cyprus and Byzantium.
29. This occasioned a breach between Cato and Cicero, which, though it did not come to open enmity, yet made a more reserved friendship between them.
30. After this, Milo killed Clodius, and, being arraigned for the murder, he asked Cicero to be his advocate.
31. The senate, fearing lest the questioning of so eminent a citizen as Milo might disturb the peace of the city, committed the superintendence of the trial to Pompey,
32. For him to maintain the security alike of the city and of the courts of justice.
33. Pompey, therefore, went in the night, and occupying the high grounds about it, surrounded the forum with soldiers.
34. Milo, fearing lest Cicero, being disturbed by such an unusual sight, should conduct his cause the less successfully,
35. Persuaded him to come to the forum in a litter, and there wait till the judges were set and the court filled.
36. On this occasion he did not perform well. Quitting his litter, he saw Pompey posted with his troops above, and seeing weapons shining round the forum,
37. He was so confounded that he could hardly begin his speech for trembling;
38. Whereas Milo was intrepid, disdaining either to let his hair grow or to put on mourning.
39. And this, indeed, seems to have been one principal cause of his condemnation, for the trial was lost.
Chapter 81
1. Shortly afterwards Cicero was appointed by lot to the province of Cilicia,
2. And set sail thither with twelve thousand foot and two thousand six hundred horse.
3. He had orders to bring back Cappadocia to its allegiance to Ariobarzanes, its king; which he effected very completely without recourse to arms.
4. And perceiving that the Cilicians were disposed to revolt, as a result of the great loss the Romans suffered in Parthia and the turbulences in Syria,
5. Cicero soothed them back into fidelity by a gentle course of government.
6. He would accept none of the presents that were offered him by the kings;
7. He remitted the charge of public entertainments, but daily at his own house received the cultured persons of the province, not sumptuously, but liberally.
8. His house had no porter, and from early in the morning he stood or walked before his door, to receive those who came to offer salutations.
9. He is said never once to have ordered any of those under his command to be beaten with rods, or to have their garments rent.
10. He never used contumelious language in his anger, nor inflicted punishment with reproach.
11. He detected an embezzlement, to a large amount, in the public money,
12. And thus relieved the cities from their burdens, at the same time allowing those who made restitution to retain their rights as citizens without further punishment.
13. He engaged too, in war, so far as to defeat the banditti who infested Mount Amanus, for which the army under his command saluted him as imperator.
14. To Caecilius, the orator, who asked him to send some panthers from Cilicia to be exhibited at the theatre in Rome,
15. He wrote, in commendation of his own actions, that there were no panthers in Cilicia,
16. For they were all fled to Caria, in anger that in so general a peace they had become the sole objects of attack.
17. On leaving his province he touched at Rhodes, and tarried for some time at Athens, longing to renew his old studies.
18. There he visited the eminent scholars, and saw his former friends and companions;
19. And after receiving the honours that were due to him, returned to Rome,
20. Where everything was now just breaking out into a civil war because of the quarrel between Pompey and Caesar.
21. When the senate offered to decree Cicero a Triumph, he told them he had rather, if the then quarrels