t when it is only your friends who are concerned,
then you become scrupulous. What more? Did you not also desert him
in the matter of the septemvirate?[22] "Yes, for he interfered
with me." What were you afraid of? I suppose you were afraid that
you would be able to refuse him nothing if he were restored to the
full possession of his rights. You loaded him with every species
of insult, a man whom you ought to have considered in the place
of a father to you, if you had had any piety or natural affection
at all. You put away his daughter, your own cousin, having already
looked out and provided yourself beforehand with another. That
was not enough. You accused a most chaste woman of misconduct.
What can go beyond this? Yet you were not content with this.
In a very full senate held on the first of January, while your
uncle was present, you dared to say that this was your reason for
hatred of Dolabella, that you had ascertained that he had committed
adultery with your cousin and your wife. Who can decide whether it
was more shameless of you to make such profligate and such impious
statements against that unhappy woman in the senate, or more wicked to
make them against Dolabella, or more scandalous to make them in the
presence of her father, or more cruel to make them at all?

XXXIX. However, let us return to the subject of Caesar's written
papers. How were they verified by you? For the acts of Caesar were for
peace's sake confirmed by the senate; that is to say, the acts which
Caesar had really done, not those which Antonius said that Caesar had
done. Where do all these come from? By whom are they produced and
vouched for? If they are false, why are they ratified? If they are
true, why are they sold? But the vote which was come to enjoined you,
after the first of June, to make an examination of Caesar's acts with
the assistance of a council. What council did you consult? Whom did
you ever invite to help you? What was the first of June that you
waited for? Was it that day on which you, having travelled all
through the colonies where the veterans were settled, returned
escorted by a band of armed men?

Oh what a splendid progress of yours was that in the months of April
and May, when you attempted even to lead a colony to Capua! How you
made your escape from thence, or rather how you barely made your
escape, we all know. And now you are still threatening that city. I
wish you would try, and we should not then be forced to sa