who had been preferred to the
highest honours sold themselves to him in utter disregard of their own
dignity.

O ye immortal gods! how great an enterprise is it to uphold the
character of a leader in the republic, for it requires one to be
influenced not merely by the thoughts but also by the eyes of the
citizens. To take to one's house the ambassador of an enemy, to admit
him to one's chamber, even to confer apart with him, is the act of a
man who thinks nothing of his dignity, and too much of his danger. But
what is danger? For if one is engaged in a contest where everything is
at stake, either liberty is assured to one if victorious, or death
if defeated, the former of which alternatives is desirable, and the
latter some time or other inevitable. But a base flight from death
is worse than any imaginable death. For I will never be induced to
believe that there are men who envy the consistency or diligence of
others, and who are indignant at the unceasing desire to assist the
republic being approved by the senate and people of Rome. That is what
we were all bound to do, and that was not only in the time of our
ancestors, but even lately, the highest praise of men of consular
rank, to be vigilant, to be anxious, to be always either thinking, or
doing, or saying something to promote the interests of the republic.

I, O conscript fathers, recollect that Quintus Scaevola the augur, in
the Marsic war, when he was a man of extreme old age, and quite broken
down in constitution, every day, as soon as it was daylight, used to
give every one an opportunity of consulting him, nor, throughout all
that war, did any one ever see him in bed, and, though old and weak,
he was the first man to come into the senate house. I wish, above all
things, that those who ought to do so would imitate his industry,
and, next to that, I wish that they would not envy the exertions of
another.

XI. In truth, O conscript fathers, now we have begun to entertain
hopes of liberty again, after a period of six years, during which we
have been deprived of it, having endured slavery longer than prudent
and industrious prisoners usually do, what watchfulness, what anxiety,
what exertions ought we to shrink from, for the sake of delivering the
Roman people? In truth, O conscript fathers, though men who have had
the honours conferred on them that we have, usually wear their gowns,
while the rest of the city is in the robe of war, still I decided that
at suc