[43] "I undertook this war against you, not in order to succeed to the leadership by destroying you, but to restore to the country the patrician government which had been subverted by the triumvirate, as not even yourself will deny. For when you created the triumvirate you acknowledged that it was not in accordance with law, but you established it as something necessary and temporary because Cassius and Brutus were still alive and you could not be reconciled to them. When they, who had been the head of the faction, were dead, and the remainder, if there were any left, were bearing arms, not against the state, but because they feared you, and moreover the five years' term was running out, I demanded that the magistracies should be revived in accordance with the customs of our fathers, not even preferring my brother to my country, but hoping to persuade him to assent upon his return and hastening to bring this about during my own term of office. If you had begun this reform you alone would have reaped the glory. Since I was not able to persuade you, I thought to march against the city and to use force, being a citizen, a nobleman, and a consul. These are the causes of the war I waged and these alone; not my brother, nor Manius, nor Fulvia, nor the colonization of those who fought at Philippi, nor pity for the cultivators who were deprived of their holdings, since I myself appointed the leaders of colonies to my brother's legions who deprived the cultivators of their possessions and divided them among the soldiers. Yet you brought this charge against me before the soldiers, shifting the cause of the war from yourself to the land distribution, and in this way chiefly you drew them to your side and overcame me, for they were persuaded that I was warring against them, and that they were defending themselves against my wrong-doing. You certainly needed to use artifice in the war you were waging. Now that you have conquered, if you are the enemy of the country you must consider me your enemy also, since I wished what I thought was for her advantage, but was prevented by famine from accomplishing it.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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