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Piso afterward called Cicero to account in the Senate, and brought out a still more choice explosion of invectives. Beast, filth, polluted monster, and such like, were the lightest of the names which Cicero hurled back at one of the oldest members of the Roman aristocracy. Who in those days saw you ever sober, or doing anything that a citizen need not be ashamed of? In L. Pisonem,10.
As for our snakes, which in Latin are properly named angues, they commonly are seen in moors, fens, loam, walls, and low bottoms. Galenus, De Theriaca ad Pisonem; Pliny, lib. 10, cap. 62. "The adder or viper alone among serpents brings forth not eggs but living creatures." Sallust, cap. 40, Pliny, lib. 37, cap. 2.
The roll of his great speeches is indeed continued after his return from exile; but even in the greatest, the Pro Sestio, the Pro Caelio, the De Provinciis Consularibus of 56, or the In Pisonem and Pro Plancio of 55 B.C., something of the old tone is missing; it is as though the same voice spoke on a smaller range of notes and with less flexibility of cadence.
Here, as always, Cicero was himself the centre round which all else revolved or ought to revolve. Ib. To Atticus, ii. 22. "Jam familiariter cum illo etiam cavillor ac jocor." To Atticus, ii. 1. Oratio in L. Pisonem. He seems to have even thought of suicide. To Atticus, iii. 9. Abridged from the Oratio pro P. Sextio. Oratio post reditum ad Quirites.
Cf. in Pisonem 73 pacis est insigne et oti toga, contra autem arma tumultus atque belli; De Or. 3, 167 'togam', pro 'pace', 'arma', ac 'tela', pro 'bello'. We have the same contrast between arma and toga in Cicero's own much-derided verse, cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi, which is defended by him, in Pis. 73 and Off. 1, 77.
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