fare that conquered citizens might
be spared.

"Then may not I, who have desired the welfare of all, be indignant
that he, from whom this favor came, is dead? especially since the very
men who were forgiven have brought him both unpopularity and death. You
shall be punished, then, they say, 'since you dare to disapprove of our
deed.' Unheard of arrogance, that some men glory in their crime, that
others may not even sorrow over it without punishment! But it has
always been the unquestioned right, even of slaves, to fear, to
rejoice, to grieve according to the dictates of their own feelings
rather than at the bidding of another man; of these rights, as things
stand now, to judge from what these champions of freedom keep saying,
they are trying to deprive us by intimidation; but their efforts are
useless. I shall never be driven by the terrors of any danger from the
path of duty or from the claims of friendship, for I have never thought
that a man should shrink from an honorable death; nay, I have often
thought that he should seek it. But why are they angry at me, if I wish
them to repent of their deed? for I desire to have Caesar's death a
bitter thing to all men.

"'But I ought as a citizen to desire the welfare of the state.' Unless
my life in the past and my hope for the future, without words from me,
prove that I desire that very end, I do not seek to establish the fact
by words. Wherefore I beg you the more earnestly to consider deeds more
than words, and to believe, if you feel that it is well for the right
to prevail, that I can have no intercourse with dishonorable men. For
am I now, in my declining years, to change that course of action which
I maintained in my youth, when I might even have gone astray with hope
of indulgence, and am I to undo my life's work? I will not do so. Yet I
shall take no step which may be displeasing to any man, except to
grieve at the cruel fate of one most closely bound to me, of one who
was a most illustrious man. But if I were otherwise minded, I would
never deny what I was doing lest I should be regarded as shameless in
doing wrong, a coward and a hypocrite in concealing it.

"'Yet the games which the young Caesar gave in memory of Caesar's victory
I superintended.' But that has to do with my private obligation and not
with the condition of the state; a duty, however, which I ow