| [10] Then the divine Augustus arose at
the point for expressing his opinion, and discoursed with the utmost eloquence.
“I call you to witness, Conscript Fathers,” said he, “that since I was made a
god, I have never addressed you; I always mind my own business. And I can no
longer disguise my feelings nor conceal the distress that shame makes all the
greater. Was it for this that I secured peace on land and sea? For this did I
make an end of civil wars? For this did I found the city on a basis of law,
adorn it with monuments, that—what to say, Conscript Fathers, I cannot
discover. All words are beneath my indignation. So in desperation I must take
to the phrase of that most clever man, Messala Corvinus, ‘I am ashamed of my authority.’ This fellow,
Conscript Fathers, who doesn’t seem to you as if he could disturb a fly, used
to kill people as easily as a dog stops to rest. But why should I enumerate the
many great men? I have no heart to lament public calamities when I behold those
of my own family. And so I will pass over the former and describe these. For I
know, even if my sister doesn’t know [as they say in Greek], my knee is
nearer than my shin. That fellow whom you see there, hiding under my name
for so many years, has shown his gratitude to me by slaying the two Julias, my great-granddaughters, one by the sword, the
other by starvation, and L. Silanus, one of my
great-great-grandsons. We shall see, Jupiter, whether in a bad case, and one
which is certainly your own, you are going to be just. Tell me, divine
Claudius, why you condemned any one of the men and women whom you put to death
before you understood their cases, or even listened to them. Where is this kind
of thing customary?
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