[49]
Influenced by these and many other considerations, I saw that, if my death
were the destruction of the common cause of the state, no one would ever
live who would venture to undertake the defence of the safety of the
republic against wicked citizens. Therefore, I feared that the result would
be, not only if I were put to death by violence, but even if I died from
natural causes, that the example of a man labouring for the preservation of
the republic would perish with me. For if, while all good men were so eager
for it, I were not restored by the senate and people of Rome, (and most unquestionably that could
never have happened if I had been killed first,) who would ever dare
afterwards to encounter the very slightest unpopularity for the sake of
having anything to do with the affairs of the republic? I, therefore, saved
the republic, O judges, by my departure. At the expense of my own grief and
misery I averted slaughter, and devastation, and conflagration, and plunder,
from you and from your children. And I, by myself, twice saved the republic
once with glory, once with misery. That I will never so far
deny that I have the feelings of a man as to boast that I felt no grief when
I was deprived of my most excellent brother, of my most beloved children, of
my most faithful wife, of the sight of you, my fellow-citizens, of my
country, and of my rank as a senator. If those had been my feelings, what
obligation would you be under to me, if for your sake I had only abandoned
those things which I considered of no value? This, in my opinion, ought to
be considered by you a most certain token of my exceeding devotion to my
country, that though I could not be absent from her without the deepest
grief, yet I preferred to endure this grief, rather than to allow her to be
destroyed by wicked citizens.
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