Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

FROM THE SECOND PHILIPPIC.

“When, therefore, this fellow (Antony) had begun to wallow in the treasures of that great man, he began to exult like a buffoon in a play, who has lately been a beggar and has become suddenly rich.[44] But, as some poet or other says,

‘Ill-gotten gains come quickly to an end.’

It is an incredible thing, and almost a miracle, how he in a few, not months, but days, squandered all that vast wealth. There was an immense quantity of wine, an excessive abundance of very valuable plate, much precious apparel, great quantities of splendid furniture, and other magnificent things in many places, such as one was likely to see belonging to a man who was not indeed luxurious, but who was very wealthy. Of all this in a few days there was nothing left. What Charybdis was ever so voracious? Charybdis, do I say? Charybdis, if she existed at all, was only one animal. The ocean, I swear most solemnly, appears hardly capable of having swallowed up such numbers of things so widely scattered, and distributed in such different places, with such rapidity.

Nothing was shut up, nothing sealed up, no list was made of anything. Whole storehouses were abandoned to the most worthless of men. Actors seized on this, actresses on that; the house was crowded with gamblers, and full of drunken men; people were drinking all day, and that too in many places; there were added to all this expense (for this fellow was not invariably fortunate) heavy gambling losses. You might see, in the cellars of the slaves, couches covered with the most richly embroidered counterpanes of Cneius Pompey. Wonder not, then, that all these things were so soon consumed. Such profligacy as that could have devoured, not only the patrimony of one individual, however ample it might have been, but whole cities and kingdoms.

And then his houses and gardens! O the cruel audacity! Did you dare to enter into that house? Did you dare to cross that most sacred threshold? and to show your most profligate countenance to the household gods who protect that abode? A house which for a long time no one could behold, no one could pass by, without tears! Are you not ashamed to dwell so long in that house—one in which, stupid and ignorant as you are, still you can see nothing which is not painful to you?

When you behold those beaks of ships in the vestibule, and those warlike trophies, do you fancy that you are entering into a house which belongs to you? It is impossible. Although you are devoid of all sense and all feeling, still you are acquainted with yourself, and with your trophies, and with your friends. Nor do I believe that you, either waking or sleeping, can ever act with quiet sense.

It is impossible but that, were you ever so drunk and frantic, as in truth you are, when the recollection of the appearance of that illustrious man comes across you, you should be roused from sleep by your fears, and often stirred up to madness if awake. I pity even the walls and the roof.”—Yonge.

The patriot paid for his stanch defence of freedom with his life. Octavius and Antony, becoming reconciled, formed with Lepidus the Second Triumvirate, or board of three, to govern the Roman world; and Cicero knew that the sun of liberty had set. The triumvirs agreed upon a general proscription of their enemies. A reign of terror deluged Italy with blood, but the noblest of those who fell was Cicero.

Antony demanded his life, and Octavius covered himself with infamy by yielding it. The orator met his fate near his villa at Formiæ; timid throughout his life, in the last scene he exhibited manly fortitude. He is said to have been calmly reading the “Medea” of Euripides in his litter when Antony’s myrmidons overtook him; a desperado who owed him many favors, while even his brutal companions covered their eyes, struck the fatal blow. The head and hands of the murdered orator were cut off and sent to Antony, whose inhuman wife, as she fondled the ghastly head in her lap, maliciously thrust her bodkin into the tongue that had denounced her husband.—True as it was, it ill became the time-serving Octavius to say, when afterward wielding the sceptre of the world as Augustus Cæsar, “Cicero was a good citizen, who really loved his country.”