similar way about it. That our
condition is difficult and dangerous and requires much care and attention
you yourselves have made evident, if in no other way, at least by this
measure. For you would not have voted to keep the senate-house under
guard, if it had been possible for you to deliberate at all with your
accustomed orderliness, and in quiet, free from fear. It is necessary for
us even on account of the presence of the soldiers to accomplish some
measure of importance, that we may not incur the disgrace that would
certainly follow from asking for them as if we feared somebody, and then
neglecting affairs as if we were liable to no danger. We shall appear to
have acquired them only nominally in behalf of the city against Antony,
but to have given them in reality to him against our own selves, and it
will look as if in addition to the other legions which he gathers against
his country he needed to acquire these very men and so prevent your
passing any vote against him even to-day.

[-20-] "Yet some have attained such a height of shamelessness as to dare
to say that he is not warring against the State and have credited you
with so great folly as to think that they will persuade you to attend to
their words rather than to his acts. But who would choose to desist from
regarding his performances and the campaign which he has made against our
allies without any orders from the senate or the people, the countries
which he is overrunning, the cities which he is besieging, and the hopes
upon which he is building in his entire course,--who would distrust, I
say, the evidence of his own eyes, and to his ruin yield credence to the
words of these men and their false statements, by which they put you off
with pretexts and excuses?

I myself am far from asserting that in doing this he is carrying out any
legal act of administration. On the contrary, because he has abandoned
the province of Macedonia, which was assigned to him by lot, and because
he chose instead the province of Gaul, which in no way pertained to him,
and because he assumed control of the legions which Caesar had sent ahead
against the Parthians, keeping them about him though no danger threatens
Italy, and because he has left the city during the period of his
consulship to go about pillaging and injuring the country,--for all these
reasons I declare that he has long been an enemy of us all. [-21-] If you
did not perceive it immediately at the start or experienc