t or
other. What a disgraceful day was yesterday to us! to us consulars, I
mean. Are we to send ambassadors again? What? would he make a truce?
Before the very face and eyes of the ambassadors he battered Mutina
with his engines. He displayed his works and his defences to the
ambassadors. The siege was not allowed one moment's breathing time,
not even while the ambassadors should be present. Send ambassadors to
this man! What for? in order to have great fears for their return?
In truth, though on the previous occasion I had voted against
the ambassadors being decreed, still I consoled myself with this
reflection, that, when they had returned from Antonius despised and
rejected, and had reported to the senate not merely that he had not
withdrawn from Gaul, as we had voted that he should, but that he had
not even retired from before Mutma, and that they had not been allowed
to proceed on to Decimus Brutus, all men would be inflamed with hatred
and stimulated by indignation, so that we should reinforce Decimus
Brutus with arms, and horses, and men. But we have become even more
languid since we have become acquainted with, not only the audacity
and wickedness of Antonius, but also with his indolence and pride.
Would that Lucius Caesar were in health, that Servius Sulpicius were
alive. This cause would be pleaded much better by these men, than it
is now by me single handed. What I am going to say I say with grief,
rather than by way of insult. We have been deserted--we have, I say,
been deserted, O conscript fathers, by our chiefs. But, as I have
often said before, all those who in a time of such danger have
proper and courageous sentiments shall be men of consular rank. The
ambassadors ought to have brought us back courage, they have brought
us back fear. Not, indeed, that they have caused me any fear--let them
have as high an opinion as they please of the man to whom they were
sent; from whom they have even brought back commands to us.

VIII. O ye immortal gods! where are the habits and virtues of our
forefathers? Caius Popillius, in the time of our ancestors, when he
had been sent as ambassador to Antiochus the king, and had given him
notice, in the words of the senate, to depart from Alexandria, which
he was besieging, on the kings seeking to delay giving his answer,
drew a line round him where he was standing with his rod, and stated
that he should report him to the senate if he did not answer him as
to what he intende