Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 2.pdf/165

 that to a senator? or what severer punishment has ever been imposed for absence than the forfeiture of a pledge, or a fine? But if he had known what opinion I should have delivered on the subject, he would have remitted somewhat of the rigor of his compulsion.

Do you think, O conscript fathers, that I would have voted for the resolution which you adopted against your own wills, of mingling funeral obsequies with supplications? of introducing inexplicable impiety into the republic? of decreeing supplications in honor of a dead man? I say nothing about who the man was. Even had he been that great Lucius Brutus who himself also delivered the republic from kingly power, and who has produced posterity nearly five hundred years after himself of similar virtue, and equal to similar achievements—even then I could not have been induced to join any dead man in a religious observance paid to the immortal gods; so that a supplication should be addressed by public authority to a man who has nowhere a sepulcher at which funeral obsequies may be celebrated.

I, O conscript fathers, should have delivered my opinion, which I could easily have defended against the Roman people, if any heavy misfortune had happened to the republic, such as war, or pestilence, or famine; some of which, indeed, do exist already; and I have my fears lest others are impending. But I pray that the immortal gods may pardon this act, both to the Roman peo-