Philippicae

M. Tullius Cicero

Nam cum serperet in urbe infinitum malum idque manaret in dies latius idemque bustum in foro facerent, qui illam insepultam sepulturam effecerant, et cotidie magis magisque perditi homines cum sui similibus servis tectis ac templis urbis minitarentur, talis animadversio fuit Dolabellae cum in audacis sceleratosque servos, tum in impuros et nefarios liberos, talisque eversio illius execratae columnae, ut mihi mirum videatur tam valde reliquum tempus ab illo uno die dissenssise.

For when an illimitable evil was creeping into the State, and spreading day by day more widely, and when the same men were building an altar in the Forum who had carried out that burial that was no burial, and when daily more and more scoundrels, together with slaves like themselves, were threatening the dwellings and temples of the city, so signal was the punishment Dolabella inflicted not only on audacious and rascally slaves, but also on debauched and wicked freemen, and so prompt was his upsetting of that accursed column, that it seems to me marvellous how greatly the time that followed differed from that one day.

Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from M. Tullius Cicero: Volume XV. Philippics, Loeb Classical Library Vol. 189, translated by Walter C. A. Ker, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, © 1926, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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