do so. You have said, that you retired in my favour from the contest
for the augurship. Oh the incredible audacity! oh the monstrous
impudence of such an assertion! For, at the time when Cnaeus Pompeius
and Quintus Hortensius named me as augur, after I had been wished for
as such by the whole college, (for it was not lawful for me to be
put in nomination by more than two members of the college,) you were
notoriously insolvent, nor did you think it possible for your safety
to be secured by any other means than by the destruction of the
republic. But was it possible for you to stand for the augurship at a
time when Curio was not in Italy? or even at the time when you were
elected, could you have got the votes of one single tribe without the
aid of Curio? whose intimate friends even were convicted of violence
for having been too zealous in your favour.

III. But I availed myself of your friendly assistance. Of what
assistance? Although the instance which you cite I have myself at
all times openly admitted. I preferred confessing that I was under
obligations to you, to letting myself appear to any foolish person not
sufficiently grateful. However, what was the kindness that you did me?
not killing me at Brundusium? Would you then have slain the man whom
the conqueror himself, who conferred on you, as you used to boast,
the chief rank among all his robbers, had desired to be safe, and had
enjoined to go to Italy? Grant that you could have slain him, is not
this, O conscript fathers, such a kindness as is done by banditti, who
are contented with being able to boast that they have granted their
lives to all those men whose lives they have not taken? and if that
were really a kindness, then these who slew that man by whom they
themselves had been saved, and whom you yourself are in the habit of
styling most illustrious men, would never have acquired such immortal
glory. But what sort of kindness is it, to have abstained from
committing nefarious wickedness? It is a case in which it ought not
to appear so delightful to me not to have been killed by you, as
miserable, that it should have been in your power to do such a thing
with impunity. However, grant that it was a kindness, since no greater
kindness could be received from a robber, still in what point can
you call me ungrateful? Ought I not to complain of the ruin of the
republic, lest I should appear ungrateful towards you? But in that
complaint, mournful indeed and miserab