u were always burying
your brains and your beard in the laps of actresses.

"And you too, O boy--"

He calls him a boy whom he has not only experienced and shall again
experience to be a man, but one of the bravest of men. It is indeed
the name appropriate to his age; but he is the last man in the world
who ought to use it, when it is his own madness that has opened to
this boy the path to glory.

"You who owe everything to his name--"

He does indeed owe everything, and nobly is he paying it. For if he
was the father of his country, as you call him, (I will see hereafter
what my opinion of that matter is,) why is not this youth still more
truly our father, to whom it certainly is owing that we are now
enjoying life, saved out of your most guilty hands!

"Are taking pains to have Dolabella legally condemned."

A base action, truly! by which the authority of this most honourable
order is defended against the insanity of a most inhuman gladiator.

"And to effect the release of this poisoner from blockade."

Do you dare to call that man a poisoner who has found a remedy against
your own poisoning tricks? and whom you are besieging in such a
manner, O you new Hannibal, (or if there was ever any abler general
than he,) as to blockade yourself, and to be unable to extricate
yourself from your present position, should you be ever so desirous to
do so? Suppose you retreat; they will all pursue you from all sides.
Suppose you stay where you are; you will be caught. You are very
right, certainly, to call him a poisoner, by whom you see that your
present disastrous condition has been brought about.

"In order that Cassius and Brutus may become as powerful as possible."

Would you suppose that he is speaking of Censorinus, or of Ventidius,
or of the Antonii themselves. But why should they be unwilling that
those men should become powerful, who are not only most excellent and
nobly born men, but who are also united with them in the defence of
the republic?

"In fact, you look upon the existing circumstances as you did on the
former ones."

What can he mean?

"You used to call the camp of Pompeius the senate."

XII. Should we rather call your camp the senate? In which you are the
only man of consular rank, you whose whole consulship is effaced from
every monument and register; and two praetors, who are afraid that
they will lose something by us,--a groundless fear. For we are
maintaining all the grants made by Caesa