desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus, on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate house. There was a motion being made about some supplications—a kind of measure when senators are not usually wanting; for they are under the compulsion, not of pledges, but of the influence of those men whose honor is being complimented; and the case is the same when the motion has reference to a triumph. The consuls are so free from anxiety at these times, that it is almost entirely free for a senator to absent himself if he pleases. And as the general custom of our body was well known to me, and as I was hardly recovered from the fatigue of my journey, and was vexed with myself, I sent a man to him, out of regard for my friendship with him, to tell him that I should not be there.
But he, in the hearing of you all, declared that he would come with masons to my house; this was said with too much passion and very intemperately. For what known crime is there such a heavy punishment appointed as that—that any one should venture to say in this assembly that he, with the assistance of a lot of common operatives, would pull down a house which had been built at the public expense in accordance with a vote of the senate? And who ever employed such compulsion as the threat of such an injury as
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