United States or El Salvador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This is particularly observable in his defence of Cluentius, where prejudices, suspicions, and difficulties are encountered with the most triumphant ingenuity; in the antecedent probabilities of his Pro Milone; in his apology for Muræna's public, and Cælius's private life, and his disparagement of Verres's military services in Sicily; it is observable too in the address with which the Agrarian law of Rullus, and the accusation of Rabirius, both popular measures, are represented to be hostile to public liberty; with which Milo's impolitic unconcern is made a touching incident; and Cato's attack upon the crowd of clients which accompanied the candidate for office, a tyrannical disregard for the feelings of the poor.
The popular vote depended for its strength on the masses of poor who were crowded into Rome; and the tribune was proposing to weaken his own army. But the very name of an agrarian law set patrician households in a flutter, and Cicero stooped to be their advocate. He attacked Rullus with brutal sarcasm. He insulted his appearance; he ridiculed his dress, his hair, and his beard.
Two persons received from the people the name of Maximus, or the Greatest, Valerius, for reconciling the senate and people, and Fabius Rullus, because he put out of the senate certain sons of freed slaves who had been admitted into it because of their wealth.
Rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction.
V. III. Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals, V. III. Renewal of the Censorship In proof of this unprejudiced persons will read not without interest the second oration against Rullus, where the "first democratic consul," gulling the friendly public in a very delectable fashion, unfolds to it the "true democracy." His epitaph still extant runs: -Cn. Calpurnius Cn. f.
But I am at a loss how to close. The name and form of the office with which he was invested he shrank from changing, and when he was intending to spare Rullus, for he observed the zeal of the populace, he wished to resist him somewhat before granting the favor and to alter the attitude of the young men, so as to have his pardon come unexpectedly.
V. III. Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals, V. III. Renewal of the Censorship In proof of this unprejudiced persons will read not without interest the second oration against Rullus, where the "first democratic consul," gulling the friendly public in a very delectable fashion, unfolds to it the "true democracy." His epitaph still extant runs: -Cn. Calpurnius Cn. f.
The old men observed, that thus Maximus Rullus and Publius Decius were declared consuls for conducting the Gallic war; that thus afterwards Papirius and Carvilius were appointed to that office against the Samnites, the Bruttians, and the Lucanian with the Tarentine people.
The speeches against Rullus were delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty definitely to a policy as to the ager publicus which was, to his disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in B.C. 59 but they do not shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his consulship took a very definite line against the populares.
He succeeded, and Rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into darkness. I regard the second speech against Rullus as the ne plus ultra, the very beau ideal of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government.
Word Of The Day