itizens who are at all guilty you should
inflict punishment straightway, by trying them in court if you can get
them under the power of your votes, and by warring against them if you
find them in arms. All such are slaves of you and of the people and of
the laws, whether they wish it or not; and it is not fitting either to
coddle them or to put them on an equal footing with the highest class of
free persons, but to pursue and chastise them like runaway servants, with
a feeling of your own superiority. [-44-] Is it not a disgrace that he
should not delay to wrong us, but we delay to defend ourselves? Or again,
that he should for a long time, weapons in hand, have been carrying on
the entire practice of war, while we waste time in decrees and embassies,
and that we should retaliate only with letters and phrases upon the man
whom we have long since discovered by his deeds to be a wrongdoer? What
do we expect? That he will some day render us obedience and pay us
respect? How can this prove true of a man who has come into such a
condition that he would not be able, even should he wish it, to be an
ordinary citizen with you under a democratic government? If he were
willing to conduct his life on fair and equitable principles, he would
never have entered in the first place upon such a career as his: and if
he had done it under the influence of folly or recklessness, he would
certainly have given it up speedily of his own accord. As the case
stands, since he has once overstepped the limits imposed by the laws and
the government and has acquired some power and authority by this action,
it is not conceivable that he would change of his own free will or heed
any one of our resolutions, but it is absolutely requisite that such a
man should be chastised with those very weapons with which he has dared
to wrong us. [-45-] And I beg you now to remember particularly a sentence
which this man himself once uttered, that it is impossible for you to be
saved, unless you conquer. Hence those who bid you send envoys are doing
nothing else than planning how you may be dilatory and the body of your
allies become as a consequence more feeble and dispirited; while he, on
the other hand, will be doing whatever he pleases, will destroy Decimus,
storm Mutina, and capture all of Gaul: the result will be that we can no
longer find means to deal with him, but shall be under the necessity of
trembling before him, paying court to him, worshiping him. This o