Book 10
3
These outrages Marcus Tullius bewailed bitterly and solemnly, in appropriate and eloquent terms. But if anyone has so rustic and so dull an ear that this brilliant and delightful speech and the harmonious arrangement of Cicero's words do not give him pleasure; if he prefers the earlier oration because it is unadorned, concise and unstudied, yet has a certain native charm, and because it has, so to say, a shade and colour of misty antiquity—let such a one, if he has any judgment at all, study the address in a similar case of Marcus Cato, a man of a still earlier time, to whose vigour and flow of language Gracchus could never hope to attain. He will realize, I think, that Cato was not content with the eloquence of his own time, but aspired to do even then what Cicero later accomplished. For in the speech which is entitled On Sham Battles he thus made complaint of Quintus Thermus: ix, Jordan. He said that his provisions had not been satisfactorily attended to by the decemvirs. The local magistrates. He ordered them to be stripped and scourged. The Bruttiani See § 18, below. scourged the decemvirs, many men saw it done. Who could endure such an insult, such tyranny, such slavery? No king has ever dared to act thus; shall such outrages be inflicted upon good men, born of a good family, and of good intentions? Where is the protection of our allies? Where is the honour of our forefathers? To think that you have dared to inflict signal wrongs, blows, lashes, stripes, these pains and tortures, accompanied with disgrace and extreme ignominy, since their fellow citizens and many other men looked on! But amid how great grief, what groans, what tears, what lamentations have I heard that this was done! Even slaves bitterly resent injustice; what feeling do you think that such men, sprung from good families, endowed with high character, had and will have so long as they live?
