previous next

[133] "Fellow-citizens, while you have been considering the case of the offenders I have not joined in the debate. When you called for a vote on Cæsar instead of on them, I had brought forward, until this moment, only one of Cæsar's acts. This one threw you into these many present controversies, and not without reason, for if we resign our offices we shall confess that we (so many and of such high rank as we are) came by them undeservedly. Consider the matters that cannot be easily controlled by us. Reckon them up by cities and provinces, by kings and princes. Almost all of these, from the rising to the setting sun, Cæsar either subdued for us by force and arms, or organized by his laws, or confirmed in their allegiance by his favors and kindness. Which of these powers do you think will consent to be deprived of what they have received, unless you mean to fill the world with new wars -- you who propose to spare these wretches for the sake of your exhausted country? But, omitting the more distant dangers and apprehensions, we have others not only near at hand, but even of our own household throughout Italy itself,-- men who are here after receiving the rewards of victory, many of them with arms in their hands and in the same organization in which they fought, men assigned to colonies by Cæsar (many thousands of whom are still in the city), -- what think you they will do if they are deprived of what they have received, or expect to receive, in town and country? The past night showed you a sample. They were coursing the streets with threats against you who were supplicating in behalf of the murderers.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (L. Mendelssohn, 1879)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: