nd to divide the
Caesarean party. But even while he did this he perpetually offended that
party and made them his enemies by harangues in the Senate, which
breathed the very spirit of the old Pompeian faction, and made him appear
to Octavius and all the friends of the dead Dictator no less guilty of
his death than those who had killed him. What could this end in but that
which you and your friends had most to fear, a reunion of the whole
Caesarean party and of their principal leaders, however discordant the
one with the other, to destroy the Pompeians? For my own part, I foresaw
it long before the event, and therefore kept myself wholly clear of those
proceedings. You think I ought to have joined you and Cassius at
Philippi, because I knew your good intentions, and that, if you
succeeded, you designed to restore the commonwealth. I am persuaded you
did both agree in that point, but you differed in so many others, there
was such a dissimilitude in your tempers and characters, that the union
between you could not have lasted long, and your dissension would have
had most fatal effects with regard both to the settlement and to the
administration of the Republic. Besides, the whole mass of it was in
such a fermentation, and so corrupted, that I am convinced new disorders
would soon have arisen. If you had applied gentle remedies, to which
your nature inclined, those remedies would have failed; if Cassius had
induced you to act with severity, your government would have been
stigmatised with the name of a tyranny more detestable than that against
which you conspired, and Caesar's clemency would have been the perpetual
topic of every factious oration to the people, and of every seditious
discourse to the soldiers. Thus you would have soon been plunged in the
miseries of another civil war, or perhaps assassinated in the Senate, as
Julius was by you. Nothing could give the Roman Empire a lasting
tranquillity but such a prudent plan of a mitigated imperial power as was
afterwards formed by Octavius, when he had ably and happily delivered
himself from all opposition and partnership in the government. Those
quiet times I lived to see, and I must say they were the best I ever had
seen, far better than those under the turbulent aristocracy for which you
contended. And let me boast a little of my own prudence, which, through
so many storms, could steer me safe into that port. Had it only given me
safety, without reputation, I