a
Roman citizen, can I think him a freeman, can I even think him a man,
who on that shameful and wicked day showed what he was willing to
endure while Caesar lived, and what he was anxious to obtain himself
after he was dead?

Nor is it possible to pass over in silence the virtue and the firmness
and the dignity of the province of Gaul. For that is the flower of
Italy, that is the bulwark of the empire of the Roman people, that is
the chief ornament of our dignity. But so perfect is the unanimity of
the municipal towns and colonies of the province of Gaul, that all
men in that district appear to have united together to defend the
authority of this order, and the majesty of the Roman people.
Wherefore, O tribunes of the people, although you have not actually
brought any other business before us beyond the question of
protection, in order that the consuls may be able to hold the senate
with safety on the first of January, still you appear to me to have
acted with great wisdom and great prudence in giving an opportunity
of debating the general circumstances of the republic. For when you
decided that the senate could not be held with safety without some
protection or other, you at the same time asserted by that decision
that the wickedness and audacity of Antonius was still continuing its
practices within our walls.

VI. Wherefore, I will embrace every consideration in my opinion which
I am now going to deliver, a course to which you, I feel sure, have no
objection, in order that authority may be conferred by us on admirable
generals, and that hope of reward may be held out by us to gallant
soldiers, and that a formal decision may be come to, not by words
only, but also by actions, that Antonius is not only not a consul, but
is even an enemy. For if he be consul, then the legions which have
deserted the consul deserve beating[24] to death. Caesar is wicked,
Brutus is impious, since they of their own heads have levied an army
against the consul. But if new honours are to be sought out for the
soldiers on account of their divine and immortal merits, and if it
is quite impossible to show gratitude enough to the generals, who is
there who must not think that man a public enemy, whose conduct
is such that those who are in arms against him are considered the
saviours of the republic?

Again, how insulting is he in his edicts! how ignorant! How like a
barbarian! In the first place, how has he heaped abuse on Caesar,
in terms