Cicero on Trump

All this has happened before...

I picked up a copy of some selected works of Cicero a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty much what would have happened to Plato if he'd become a very, very angry blogger/lawyer. Here are some (very lightly edited) highlights from the Second Phillipic Against Anthony that I found to be, perhaps, relevant to certain contemporary political situations.



For what was left of Rome, Anthony, owed its final annihilation to yourself. In your home everything had a price : and a truly sordid series of deals it was. Laws you passed, laws you caused to be put through in your interests which had never even been formally proposed. You admitted this yourself. You were an augur, yet you never took the auspices. You were a consul, yet you blocked the legal right of other officials to exercise the veto. Your armed escort was shocking. You are a drink-sodden, sex-ridden wreck. Never a day passes in that ill-reputed house of yours without orgies of the most repulsive kind.

What a disgusting, intolerable sensualist the man is, as well as a vicious, unsavoury crook ! Really your speech was demented, it was so full of inconsistencies. From beginning to end, you were not merely incoherent but glaringly self-contradictory : indeed you contradicted yourself more often than you contradicted me. Go on, criticise the Senate, criticise the knights who were at that time its partners. Assail every class and every citizen with your accusations, provided you admit that at the present moment this meeting of ours is packed with your Ituraen police. How could a sane person first take up arms to destroy his country, and then protest someone else had armed himself to save it ?

What a fool you are, Anthony. Do you not understand this ? If wanting Caesar to be killed is a crime, then it is also criminal to have rejoiced when he was dead. So everyone is guilty ! For every decent person killed Caesar ! All were willing for this to happen - or were glad when it happened. The desire nobody lacked.

Concentrate, please - just for a little. Try to make your brain work for a moment as if you were sober. You, who are far from being a slave, are an autocratic ruler : you, who employed the treasure in the Temple of Ops to wipe off your gigantic debts, who after manipulating these same account books squandered countless sums, who transferred enormous possessions from Caesar's house to your own. What an immensely profitable output of fake memoranda and forged handwritings your home produces ! The place is a forger's workshop, a black market : whole properites and cities, mass exemptions from tribute and taxation are the wares of its truly scandalous trade.

Your bankruptcy, in early adolescence : do you remember that ? Your father's fault, you will say. Certainly, and what a truly filial self-defence ! At first you were just a public prostitute, with a fixed price : and quite a high one, too. But soon Curio intervened and took you off the streets, promoting you, one might say, to wifely status, making a sound, steady, married woman out of you. No boy bought for sensual purposes was ever so completely in his master's power as you were in Curio's. But about Anthony's degredations and sex-crimes that is as far as I will go. For there are some things which it would be indecent for me to describe. As far as free speaking goes you have the advantage of me, since you have done things which a respectable opponent cannot even mention. For never, anywhere in the world, have there been stories of such depraved and discreditable misconduct.

You impudence, Anthony, was preposterous. How could you have the effontery to enter that house, to pass its most sacred threshold, to let the household gods of such an abode see you flaunting your degraded features ? You are brainless, I know : yet, even so, surely none of the things that are there can bring you enjoyment. When you look at those beaks of ships in the hall, you cannot possibly imagine that the house you are entering is your own ! Drink-sodden and demented though you are, the appearance in your dreams of that great man Pompey must surely rouse you in terror; and when you are awake, too, his recurring image must unhinge your mind still further. Nowadays in his home, every dining-room is a taproom, every bedroom a brothel. Those walls had witnessed noble discussions, noble thoughts, noble writings; the principles of all wisdom and all learning. When you, on the other hand, became its lodger - for householder I will not call you - the house rang with the sound of drunkards, the pavements swam with wine, the walls dripped with it. On the view were young free-born Roman youths consorting with paid boys; Roman matrons with prostitutes. And yet, Senators, familiarity with such spectacles has inured us to the shock.

How he harps on the phrase : "I, the consul, Anthony". That amounts to saying, "I, the consul, debauchee", or, "I, the consul, criminal". For that is the significance or "Anthony". True, your role in the war was insignificant. That was because you were frightened, or rather preoccupied with your sexual interests. Depraved character ! No other epithet is is adequate for this creature who plunged the city into terror by night, plunged Italy into a series of nerve-wracking days, merely in order to make his sudden appearance before a woman. What a surprise this must have been to her : to see such behaviour from a male prostitute.

So I feel no surprise when you disturb the peace, when you shun Rome and the very daylight itself, when you drink with thieving riff-raff from early in one day until dawn of the next. For you, no refuge can be safe. Where could you possibly find a place in any community owning laws and lawcourts - since these are precisely what you have done your utmost to abolish and to replace by tyranny ?

On the Capitol, when our noble liberators desired me to go to you and urge you to uphold the Republican government, I told them this : that as long as you were still frightened, you would promise anything, but as soon as your fears ceased you would be yourself again. Even though you have abruptly turned against me, yet I am sorry for you - because you have subsequently done so little justice to your own good fame. Fear made you a good citizen. However, as an instructor of good behaviour, fear lacks permanency; and your unscrupulousness - which never leaves you unless you are afraid - soon perverted you into evil ways again.

A guard is no protection, I can tell you ! The protection you need is not weapons, but the affection and goodwill of your fellow citizens. The people of Rome will seize your weapons and wrench them from you. Our country does not lack men to place in charge of its affairs. That there are young noblemen ready to leap to its defence is beyond doubt. They may choose to retire for a spell, seeking quiet, but Rome will call them back. If you are not afraid of brave Romans - seeing that armed satellites keep them away from your person - believe me, your own supporters will not stand you for much longer. To be afraid of danger from one's own people is no sort of a life; a thousand deaths are better than the inability to live in one's own community without an armed guard ! Do you never understand the significance of this : that brave men have now learnt to appreciate the noble achievement, the wonderful benefaction, the glorious renown, of killing a tyrant ? When men could not endure Caesar, will they endure you ? Mark my words, this time there will be crowds competing to to the deed. They will not wait for a suitable opportunity - they will be too impatient.