The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 | Page 2

of
Caesar, and the greater part of the army.
At the end of May Cicero began to return towards Rome, in order to
arrive there in time for the meeting of the senate on the first of June,
but many of his friends dissuaded him from entering the city, and at last
he determined not to appear in the senate on that day, but to make a
tour in Greece, to assist him in which, Dolabella named him one of his
lieutenants. Antonius also gave Brutus and Cassius commissions to buy
corn in Asia and Sicily for the use of the republic, in order to keep them
out of the city.
Meantime Sextus Pompeius, who was at the head of a considerable
army in Spain, addressed letters to the consuls proposing terms of
accommodation, which after some debate, and some important
modifications, were agreed to, and he quitted Spain, and came as far as
Marseilles on his road towards Rome.
Cicero having started for Greece was forced to put back by contrary
winds, and returned to Velia on the seventeenth of August, where he
had a long conference with Brutus, who soon after left Italy for his
province of Macedonia, which Caesar had assigned him before his
death, though Antonius now wished to compel him to exchange it for
Crete. After this conference Cicero returned to Rome, where he was
received with unexampled joy, immense multitudes thronging out to
meet him, and to escort him into the city. He arrived in Rome on the
last day of August. The next day the senate met, to which he was
particularly summoned by Antonius, but he excused himself as not
having recovered from the fatigue of his journey.
Antonius was greatly offended, and in his speech in the senate

threatened openly to order his house to be pulled down, the real reason
of Cicero's absenting himself from the senate being, that the business of
the day was to decree some new and extraordinary honours to Caesar,
and to order supplications to him as a divinity, which Cicero was
determined not to concur in, though he knew it would be useless to
oppose them.
The next day also the senate met, and Antonius absented himself, but
Cicero came down and delivered the following speech, which is the
first of that celebrated series of fourteen speeches made in opposition to
Antonius and his measures, and called Philippics from the orations of
Demosthenes against Philip, to which the Romans were in the habit of
comparing them.[2]
I. Before, O conscript fathers, I say those things concerning the
republic which I think myself bound to say at the present time, I will
explain to you briefly the cause of my departure from, and of my return
to the city. When I hoped that the republic was at last recalled to a
proper respect for your wisdom and for your authority, I thought that it
became me to remain in a sort of sentinelship, which was imposed
upon me by my position as a senator and a man of consular rank. Nor
did I depart anywhere, nor did I ever take my eyes off from the republic,
from the day on which we were summoned to meet in the temple of
Tellus,[3] in which temple, I, as far as was in my power, laid the
foundations of peace, and renewed the ancient precedent set by the
Athenians, I even used the Greek word,[4] which that city employed in
those times in allaying discords, and gave my vote that all recollection
of the existing dissensions ought to be effaced by everlasting oblivion.
The oration then made by Marcus Antonius was an admirable one, his
disposition, too, appeared excellent, and lastly, by his means and by his
sons', peace was ratified with the most illustrious of the citizens, and
everything else was consistent with this beginning. He invited the chief
men of the state to those deliberations which he held at his own house
concerning the state of the republic, he referred all the most important
matters to this order. Nothing was at that time found among the papers
of Caius Caesar except what was already well known to everybody, and
he gave answers to every question that was asked of him with the
greatest consistency. Were any exiles restored? He said that one was,
and only one. Were any immunities granted? He answered, None. He

wished us even to adopt the proposition of Servius Sulpicius, that most
illustrious man, that no tablet purporting to contain any decree or grant
of Caesar's should be published after the Ides of March were expired. I
pass over many other things, all excellent--for I am hastening to come
to a very extraordinary act of virtue of Marcus Antonius. He utterly
abolished from the constitution