This was the last Philippic and last oration which Cicero delivered. The union of Antony and Octavius soon after annihilated the power of the Senate; and Cicero, like Demosthenes, fell the victim of that indignant eloquence with which he had lashed the enemies of his country:--
"Eloquio sed uterque periit orator; utrumque Largus et exundans letho dedit ingenii fons. Ingenio manus est et cervix cæsa, nec unquam Sanguine causidici maduerunt rostra pusilli(331)."
Besides the complete orations above mentioned, Cicero delivered many, of which only fragments remain, or which are now entirely lost. All those which he pronounced during the five years intervening between his election to the Quæstorship and the Ædileship have perished, except that for M. Tullius, of which the exordium and narrative were brought to light at the late celebrated discovery by Mai, in the Ambrosian library at Milan. Tullius had been forcibly dispossessed (_vi armata_) by one of the Fabii of a farm he held in Lucania; and the whole Fabian race were prosecuted for damages, under a law of Lucullus, whereby, in consequence of depredations committed in the municipal states of Italy, every family was held responsible for the violent aggressions of any of its tribe. A large fragment of the oration for Scaurus forms by far the most valuable part of the discovery in the Ambrosian library. The oration, indeed, is not entire, but the part we have of it is tolerably well connected. The charge was one of provincial embezzlement, and in the exordium the orator announces that he was to treat, 1st, of the general nature of the accusation itself; 2d, of the character of the Sardinians; 3d, of that of Scaurus; and, lastly, of the special charge concerning the corn. Of these, the first two heads are tolerably entire; and that in which he exposes the faithless character of the Sardinians, and thus shakes the credibility of the witnesses for the prosecution is artfully managed. The other fragments discovered in the Ambrosian library consist merely of detached sentences, of which it is almost impossible to make a connected meaning. Of this description is the oration _In P. Clodium_; yet still, by the aid of the Commentary found along with it, we are enabled to form some notion of the tenor of the speech. The well-known story of Clodius finding access to the house of Cæsar, in female disguise, during the celebration of the mysteries of Bona Dea, gave occasion to this invective. A sort of altercation had one day passed in the Senate between Cicero and Clodius, soon after the acquittal of the latter for this offence, which probably suggested to Cicero the notion of writing a connected oration, inveighing against the vices and crimes of Clodius, particularly his profanation of the secret rites of the goddess, and the corrupt means by which he had obtained his acquittal. In one of his epistles to Atticus, Cicero gives a detailed account of this altercation, which certainly does not afford us a very dignified notion of senatorial gravity and decorum.
