nstantly does he harp on the expression "the consul
Antonius!" This amounts to say "that most debauched consul," "that
most worthless of men, the consul." For what else is Antonius? For
if any dignity were implied in the name, then, I imagine, your
grandfather would sometimes have called himself "the consul Antonius."
But he never did. My colleague too, your own uncle, would have called
himself so. Unless you are the only Antonius. But I pass over those
offences which have no peculiar connexion with the part you took
in harassing the republic; I return to that in which you bore so
principal a share,--that is, to the civil war; and it is mainly owing
to you that that was originated, and brought to a head, and carried
on.

XXIX. Though you yourself took no personal share in it, partly through
timidity, partly through profligacy, you had tasted, or rather had
sucked in, the blood of fellow-citizens: you had been in the battle
of Pharsalia as a leader; you had slain Lucius Domitius, a most
illustrious and high-born man; you had pursued and put to death in the
most barbarous manner many men who had escaped from the battle, and
whom Caesar would perhaps have saved, as he did some others.

And after having performed these exploits, what was the reason why you
did not follow Caesar into Africa; especially when so large a portion
of the war was still remaining? And accordingly, what place did you
obtain about Caesar's person after his return from Africa? What was
your rank? He whose quaestor you had been when general, whose master of
the horse when he was dictator, to whom you had been the chief cause
of war, the chief instigator of cruelty, the sharer of his plunder,
his son, as you yourself said, by inheritance, proceeded against you
for the money which you owed for the house and gardens, and for
the other property which you had bought at that sale. At first you
answered fiercely enough, and that I may not appear prejudiced against
you in every particular, you used a tolerably just and reasonable
argument. "What, does Caius Caesar demand money of me? why should he do
so, any more than I should claim it of him? Was he victorious without
my assistance? No, and he never could have been. It was I who supplied
him with a pretext for civil war, it was I who proposed mischievous
laws, it was I who took up arms against the consuls and generals of
the Roman people, against the senate and people of Rome, against the
gods of the countr