Summum ad gradum cum claritatis veneris
Consistes ægre; et quum descendas decides;
Cecidi ego, cadet qui sequitur, laus est publica.
Cæsar, however, restored to him the rank and equestrian privileges of which his act had deprived him; but still he could not recover the respect of his countrymen. As he passed the orchestra in his way to the stalls of the knights, Cicero cried out, “If we were not so crowded, I would make room for you here.” Laberius replied, alluding to Cicero’s lukewarmness as a political partisan, “I am astonished that you should be crowded, as you generally sit on two stools.” The calm and feeling rebuke with which, in the prologue to his mime, he remonstrated against the tyranny of Cæsar, is singularly spirited and beautiful:—
Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum
Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt,
Quo me detrusit pæne extremis sensibus?
Quem nulla ambitio, nulla unquam largitio,
Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas
Movere potuit in juventa de statu;