ne thing
more about the embassy and I am done:--that Antony also gave you no
account of what business he had in hand, because he intended that you
should do this.

"I, therefore, for these and all other reasons advise you not to delay
nor to lose time, but to make war upon him as quickly as possible. You
must reflect that the majority of enterprises owe their success rather to
an opportune occasion than to their strength; and you should by all means
feel perfectly sure that I would never give up peace if it were really
peace, in the midst of which I have most influence and have acquired
wealth and reputation, nor have urged you to make war, did I not think it
to your advantage.

[-46-] And I advise you, Calenus, and the rest who are of the same mind
as you, to be quiet and allow the senate to vote the requisite measures
and not for the sake of your private good-will toward Antony recklessly
betray the common interests of all of us. Indeed, I am of the opinion,
Conscript Fathers, that if you heed my counsel I may enjoy in your
company and with thorough satisfaction freedom and preservation, but that
if you vote anything different, I shall choose to die rather than to
live. I have, in general, never been afraid of death as a consequence of
my outspokenness, and now I fear it least of all. That accounts, indeed,
for my overwhelming success, the proof of which lies in the fact that
you decreed a sacrifice and festival in memory of the deeds done in my
consulship,--an honor which had never before been granted to any one,
even to one who had achieved some great end in war. Death, if it befell
me, would not be at all unseasonable, especially when you consider that
my consulship was so many years ago; yet remember that in that very
consulship I uttered the same sentiment, to make you feel that in any
and all business I despised death. To dread any one, however, that was
against you, and in your company to be a slave to any one would prove
exceedingly unseasonable to me. Wherefore I deem this last to be the ruin
and destruction not only of the body, but of the soul and reputation,
by which we become in a certain sense immortal. But to die speaking and
acting in your behalf I regard as equivalent to immortality.

[-47-] "And if Antony, also, felt the force of this, he would never have
entered upon such a career, but would have even preferred to die like his
grandfather rather than to behave like Cinna who killed him. For, putti