n the most honourable and
complimentary language.

II. A new light, as it were, seemed to be brought over us, now that
not only the kingly power which we had endured, but all fear of such
power for the future, was taken away from us; and a great pledge
appeared to have been given by him to the republic that he did wish
the city to be free, when he utterly abolished out of the republic the
name of dictator, which had often been a legitimate title, on account
of our late recollection of a perpetual dictatorship. A few days
afterwards the senate was delivered from the danger of bloodshed, and
a hook[5] was fixed into that runaway slave who had usurped the name
of Caius Marius. And all these things he did in concert with his
colleague. Some other things that were done were the acts of Dolabella
alone; but, if his colleague had not been absent, would, I believe,
have been done by both of them in concert.

For when enormous evil was insinuating itself into the republic, and
was gaining more strength day by day; and when the same men were
erecting a tomb[6] in the forum, who had performed that irregular
funeral; and when abandoned men, with slaves like themselves, were
every day threatening with more and more vehemence all the houses and
temples of the city; so severe was the rigour of Dolabella, not
only towards the audacious and wicked slaves, but also towards the
profligate and unprincipled freemen, and so prompt was his overthrow
of that accursed pillar, that it seems marvellous to me that the
subsequent time has been so different from that one day.

For behold, on the first of June, on which day they had given notice
that we were all to attend the senate, everything was changed.
Nothing was done by the senate, but many and important measures were
transacted by the agency of the people, though that people was both
absent and disapproving. The consuls elect said, that they did not
dare to come into the senate. The liberators of their country were
absent from that city from the neck of which they had removed the yoke
of slavery; though the very consuls themselves professed to praise
them in their public harangues and in all their conversation. Those
who were called Veterans, men of whose safety this order had been most
particularly careful, were instigated not to the preservation of those
things which they had, but to cherish hopes of new booty. And as I
preferred hearing of those things to seeing them, and as I had an
h