erests and dignity
in combining with the slayers of Julius Caesar against him. But they,
instead of answering this letter, sent it to Cicero at Rome. At the
same time Lepidus wrote a public letter to the senate to exhort them
to measures of peace; and to a reconciliation with Antonius; and took
no notice of the public honours which had been decreed to him in
compliance with Cicero's motion. The senate was much displeased at
this. They agreed, however, to a proposal of Servilius--to thank
Lepidus for his love of peace, but to desire him to leave that to
them; as there could be no peace till Antonius had laid down his arms.
But Antonius's friends were encouraged by Lepidus's letter to renew
their suggestions of a treaty; which caused Cicero to deliver the
following speech to the senate for the purpose of counteracting the
influence of their arguments.

I. From the first beginning, O conscript fathers, of this war which we
have undertaken against those impious and wicked citizens, I have been
afraid lest the insidious proposals of peace might damp our zeal for
the recovery of our liberty. But the name of peace is sweet; and the
thing itself not only pleasant but salutary. For a man seems to have
no affection either for the private hearths of the citizens, nor for
the public laws, nor for the rights of freedom, who is delighted with
discord and the slaughter of his fellow-citizens, and with civil war;
and such a man I think ought to be erased from the catalogue of men,
and exterminated from all human society. Therefore, if Sylla, or
Marius, or both of them, or Octavius, or Cinna, or Sylla for the
second time, or the other Marius and Carbo, or if any one else has
ever wished for civil war, I think that man a citizen born for the
detestation of the republic. For why should I speak of the last man
who stirred up such a war; a man whose acts, indeed, we defend, while
we admit that the author of them was deservedly slain? Nothing, then,
is more infamous than such a citizen or such a man; if indeed he
deserves to be considered either a citizen or a man, who is desirous
of civil war.

But the first thing that we have to consider, O conscript fathers,
is whether peace can exist with all men, or whether there be any war
incapable of reconciliation, in which any agreement of peace is only
a covenant of slavery. Whether Sylla was making peace with Scipio,
or whether he was only pretending to do so, there was no reason to
despair, i