ur motion, excused from obedience to the laws, and allowed
to be absent. Why were the games of Apollo celebrated with incredible
honour to Marcus Brutus? why were provinces given to Brutus and
Cassius? why were quaestors assigned to them? why was the number of
their lieutenants augmented? And all these measures were owing to you.
They are not homicides then. It follows that in your opinion they are
deliverers of their country, since there can be no other alternative.
What is the matter? Am I embarrassing you? For perhaps you do not
quite understand propositions which are stated disjunctively. Still
this is the sum total of my conclusion; that since they are acquitted
by you of wickedness, they are at the same time pronounced most worthy
of the very most honourable rewards.

Therefore, I will now proceed again with my oration. I will write to
them, if any one by chance should ask whether what you have imputed to
me be true, not to deny it to any one. In truth, I am afraid that it
must be considered either a not very creditable thing to them, that
they should have concealed the fact of my being an accomplice; or else
a most discreditable one to me that I was invited to be one, and that
I shirked it. For what greater exploit (I call you to witness, O
august Jupiter!) was ever achieved not only in this city, but in all
the earth? What more glorious action was ever done? What deed was ever
more deservedly recommended to the everlasting recollection of men?
Do you, then, shut me up with the other leaders in the partnership in
this design, as in the Trojan horse? I have no objection; I even thank
you for doing so, with whatever intent you do it. For the deed is so
great an one, that I cannot compare the unpopularity which you wish to
excite against me on account of it, with its real glory.

For who can be happier than those men whom you boast of having now
expelled and driven from the city? What place is there either so
deserted or so uncivilized, as not to seem to greet and to covet the
presence of those men wherever they have arrived? What men are so
clownish as not, when they have once beheld them, to think that they
have reaped the greatest enjoyment that life can give? And what
posterity will be ever so forgetful, what literature will ever be
found so ungrateful, as not to cherish their glory with undying
recollection? Enrol me then, I beg, in the number of those men.

XIV. But one thing I am afraid you may not approve