d to do before he moved out of that line which
surrounded him. He did well for he had brought with him the
countenance of the senate and the authority of the Roman people, and
if a man does not obey that, we are not to receive commands from him
in return, but he is to be utterly rejected. Am I to receive commands
from a man who despises the commands of the senate? Or am I to think
that he has anything in common with the senate, who besieges a general
of the Roman people in spite of the prohibition of the senate? But
what commands they are! With what arrogance, with what stupidity,
with what insolence are they conceived! But what made him charge our
ambassadors with them when he was sending Cotyla to us, the ornament
and bulwark of his friends, a man of aedilitian rank? if, indeed, he
really was an aedile at the time when the public slaves flogged him
with thongs at a banquet by command of Antonius.

But what modest commands they are! We must be non-hearted men,
O conscript fathers, to deny anything to this man! "I give up both
provinces," says he, "I disband my army, I am willing to become a
private individual." For these are his very words. He seems to
be coming to himself. "I am willing to forget everything, to be
reconciled to everybody." But what does he add? "If you give booty and
land to my six legions, to my cavalry, and to my praetorian cohort."
He even demands rewards for those men for whom, if he were to demand
pardon, he would be thought the most impudent of men. He adds further,
"Those men to whom the lands have been given which he himself and
Dolabella distributed, are to retain them." This is the Campanian
and Leontine district, both which our ancestors considered a certain
resource in times of scarcity.

IX. He is protecting the interests of his buffoons and gamesters and
pimps. He is protecting Capho's and Sasu's interests too, pugnacious
and muscular centurions, whom he placed among his troops of male and
female buffoons. Besides all this, he demands "that the decrees of
himself and his colleague concerning Caesar's writings and memoranda
are to stand." Why is he so anxious that every one should have what he
has bought, if he who sold it all has the price which he received for
it? "And that his accounts of the money in the temple of Ops are not
to be meddled with." That is to say, that those seven hundred millions
of sesterces are not to be recovered from him. "That the septemviri
are to be exempt fro