M. Tullius Cicero Pro L. Murena 89

[89] Or to his mother, who, wretched woman, having lately embraced her son as consul, is now in all the torments or anxiety, lest she should but a short time afterwards behold that same son stripped of all his dignity? But why do I speak of his home or of his mother, when the new punishment of the law deprives him of home, and parent, and of the intercourse with and sight of all his relations? Shall the wretched man then go into banishment? Whither shall he go? Shall he go to the east, where he was for many years lieutenant, where he commanded armies, and performed many great exploits? But it is a most painful thing to return to a place in disgrace, from which you have departed in honour. Shall he hide himself in the opposite regions of the earth, so as to let Transalpine Gaul see the same man grieving and mourning, whom it lately saw with the greatest joy, exercising the highest authority? In that same province, moreover, with what feelings will he behold Caius Murena, his own brother? What will be the grief of the one what will be the agony of the other? What will be the lamentations of both? How great will the vicissitudes of fortune appear and what a change will there be in every one's conversation when in the very places in which a few days before messengers and letters had repeated, with every indication of joy that Murena had been made consul in the very places from which his own friends and his hereditary connections flocked to Rome for the purpose of congratulating him he himself arrives on a sudden as the messenger of his own misfortune.