, the propraetor; all Italy is armed
against you; and then do you call yours "a party," instead of a revolt
from the republic? "To seek to avenge the death of Trebonius, or that
of Caesar." We have avenged Trebonius sufficiently by pronouncing
Dolabella a public enemy. The death of Caesar is best defended by
oblivion and silence. But take notice what his object is.--When
he thinks that the death of Caesar ought to be revenged, he is
threatening with death, not those only who perpetrated that action,
but those also who were not indignant at it.

XIX. "Men who will count the destruction of either you or me gain
to them. A spectacle which as yet Fortune herself has taken care to
avoid, unwilling to see two armies which belong to one body fighting,
with Cicero acting as master of the show; a fellow who is so far happy
that he has cajoled you both with the same compliments as those with
which he boasted that he had deceived Caesar."

He proceeds in his abuse of me, as if he had been very fortunate in
all his former reproaches of me; but I will brand him with the
most thoroughly deserved marks of infamy, and pillory him for the
everlasting recollection of posterity. I a "master of the show of
gladiators!" indeed he is not wholly wrong, for I do wish to see the
worst party slain, and the best victorious. He writes that "whichever
of them are destroyed we shall count as so much gain." Admirable gain,
when, if you, O Antonius, are victorious, (may the gods avert such a
disaster!) the death of those men who depart from life untortured will
be accounted happy! He says that Hirtius and Caesar "have been cajoled
by me by the same compliments." I should like to know what compliment
has been as yet paid to Hirtius by me; for still more and greater
ones than have been paid him already are due to Caesar. But do you,
O Antonius, dare to say that Caesar, the father, was deceived by me?
You, it was you, I say, who really slew him at the Lupercal games.
Why, O most ungrateful of men, have you abandoned your office of
priest to him? But remark now the admirable wisdom and consistency of
this great and illustrious man.

"I am quite resolved to brook no insult either to myself or to my
friends; nor to desert that party which Pompeius hated, nor to allow
the veterans to be removed from their abodes; nor to allow individuals
to be dragged out to torture, nor to violate the faith which I pledged
to Dolabella."

I say nothing of the rest of t