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From the first beginning, O conscript fathers, of this war which we have
undertaken against those impious and wicked citizens, I have been afraid lest
the insidious proposals of peace might damp our zeal for the recovery of our
liberty. For the name of peace is sweet; and the thing itself not only pleasant
but salutary. For a man seems to have no affection either for the private
hearths of the citizens, nor for the public laws, nor for the rights of freedom,
who is delighted with discord and the slaughter of his fellow-citizens, and with
civil war; and such a man I think ought to be erased from the catalogue of men,
and exterminated from all human society. Therefore, if Sulla, or Marius, or both
of them, or Octavius, or Cinna, or Sulla for the second time, or the other
Marius and Carbo, or if any one else has ever wished for civil war, I think that
man a citizen born for the detestation of the republic.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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