men you have
adjudged to be the man who really has done so, Caius Caesar, who had
diverted the nefarious attacks of Marcus Antonius against this city,
and compelled him to direct them against Gaul; and next to him you
consider the veteran soldiers who first followed Caesar; then those
excellent and heavenly-minded legions the Martial and the fourth,
to whom you have promised honours and rewards, for having not only
abandoned their consul, but for having even declared war against him.
And on the same day, having a decree brought before you and published
on purpose, you praised the conduct of Decimus Brutus, a most
excellent citizen, and sanctioned with your public authority this war
which he had undertaken of his own head.

What else, then, did you do on that day except pronounce Antonius a
public enemy? After these decrees of yours, will it be possible for
him to look upon you with equanimity, or for you to behold him without
the most excessive indignation? He has been excluded and cut off and
wholly separated from the republic, not merely by his own wickedness,
as it seems to me, but by some especial good fortune of the republic.
And if he should comply with the demands of the ambassadors and return
to Rome, do you suppose that abandoned citizens will ever be in need
of a standard around which to rally? But this is not what I am so much
afraid of. There are other things which I am more apprehensive of
and more alarmed at. He never will comply with the demands of the
ambassadors. I know the man's insanity and arrogance; I know the
desperate counsels of his friends, to which he is wholly given up.
Lucius his brother, as being a man who has fought abroad, leads on
his household. Even suppose him to be in his senses himself, which he
never will be; still he will not be allowed by these men to act as if
he were so. In the mean time, time will be wasted. The preparations
for war will cool. How is it that the war has been protracted as long
as this, if it be not by procrastination and delay?

From the very first moment after the departure, or rather after the
hopeless flight of that bandit, that the senate could have met in
freedom, I have always been demanding that we should be called
together. The first day that we were called together, when the consuls
elect were not present, I laid, in my opinion, amid the greatest
unanimity on your part, the foundations of the republic, later,
indeed, than they should have been laid, f