son for the price at which
they bought them. It was the act of a sufficiently rash man, not to
say an audacious one, to touch a single particle of that property;
but who will have the face to endeavour to retain it, when its most
illustrious owner is restored to his country? Will not that man
restore his plunder, who enfolding the patrimony of his master in
his embrace, clinging to the treasure like a dragon, the slave of
Pompeius, the freedman of Caesar, has seized upon his estates in
the Lucanian district? And as for those seven hundred millions of
sesterces which you, O conscript fathers, promised to the young man,
they will be recovered in such a manner that the son of Cnaeus Pompeius
will appear to have been established by you in his patrimony. This
is what the senate must do; the Roman people will do the rest
with respect to that family which was at one time one of the most
honourable it ever saw. In the first place, it will invest him with
his father's honour as an augur, for which rank I will nominate him
and promote his election, in order that I may restore to the son what
I received from the father. Which of these men will the Roman people
most willingly sanction as the augur of the all-powerful and
all-great Jupiter, whose interpreters and messengers we have been
appointed,--Pompeius or Antonius? It seems indeed, to me, that Fortune
has managed this by the divine aid of the immortal gods, that, leaving
the acts of Caesar firmly ratified, the son of Cnaeus Pompeius might
still be able to recover the dignities and fortunes of his father.

VI. And I think, O conscript fathers, that we ought not to pass over
that fact either in silence,--that those illustrious men who are
acting as ambassadors, Lucius Paullus, Quintus Thermus, and Caius
Fannius, whose inclinations towards the republic you are thoroughly
acquainted with, and also with the constancy and firmness of that
favourable inclination, report that they turned aside to Marseilles
for the purpose of conferring with Pompeius, and that they found him
in a disposition very much inclined to go with his troops to Mutina,
if he had not been afraid of offending the minds of the veterans. But
he is a true son of that father who did quite as many things wisely
as he did bravely. Therefore you perceive that his courage was quite
ready, and that prudence was not wanting to him.

And this, too, is what Marcus Lepidus ought to take care of,--not
to appear to act in any