M. Tullius Cicero, For Plancius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[71] But you say that I make out the kindness done me by Plancius to have been greater than it really was, and as you say, I exaggerate it in speaking of it as if I were bound to regulate my gratitude by your estimate and not by my own. “What great service was it after all that he did you? Was it that he did not put you to death?” Say rather that he prevented me from being put to death. And, while speaking on this point, O Cassius, you even acquitted my enemies and said that no plots had been laid by them against my life. And Laterensis advanced the same assertion. Wherefore I will presently say a little more on that head. At present I only ask of you whether you think it was but a slight hatred which my enemies had conceived against me? Did any barbarians ever entertain such savage and cruel feelings against an open enemy? Or do you suppose that there was in those men any regard for fame or any fear of punishment when you saw them during the whole of that year brandishing their swords in the forum, menacing the temples with conflagration, and disturbing the whole city with their violence? Unless, perhaps, you think that they spared my life because they had no apprehension of my return. Do you think that there was any one so wholly destitute of sense as not to think that if these men were permitted to live, and if the city and the senate-house were allowed to remain standing, I also ought certainly to be restored if I too remained alive? Wherefore you, being such a man and such a citizen as you are, ought not to say that my enemies were too moderate to attack my life, when the fact is that it was preserved by the fidelity of my friends.