ink that not one of you could equal him, but
rejoicing in his surpassing greatness. The greater he looms up before
you, the more greatly will you feel yourselves benefited, so that envy
will not be bred in you by your inferiority to him but awe from the
advantages you have received at his hands.

[-36-] "I shall begin at the point where he also began to enter politics,
that is, from his earliest manhood. This, indeed, is one of the greatest
achievements of Augustus,--that when he had just emerged from boyhood and
was entering upon the state of youth, he paid attention to education
so long as public affairs were well managed by the famous Caesar, the
demi-god: when after the conspiracy against the latter the whole
commonwealth was thrown into confusion, he at the same time amply avenged
his father and rendered a much needed aid to you, not fearing the
multitude of his enemies nor dreading the greatness of the business nor
hesitating through his own immaturity. Yet what deed like this can be
cited of Alexander of Macedon or our Romulus, who have the reputation of
having done something brilliant when very young? But these I shall pass
over, lest from merely comparing them with him and bringing them up,--and
that among you who are acquainted with him no less than I,--I may be
thought to be diminishing the greatness of Augustus. If I am to do this
sort of thing, I should be justified only if I looked at his deeds beside
those of Hercules: yet even then I should fail of my effect, inasmuch as
the latter killed only serpents when he was a child, a stag and a
boar when he was a man,--oh, yes, and by Jupiter a lion also, though
reluctantly and in obedience to a command; whereas our hero voluntarily
made wars and enacted laws not among beasts but among men, carefully
preserved the commonwealth, and himself gained brilliance. It was for
this that you chose him praetor and appointed him consul at that age when
some are unwilling even to serve in the army.

[-37-] "This was the beginning of political life for Augustus, and it is
the beginning of my speech about him. Soon after, seeing that the
largest and best portion both of the people and of the senate was in
accord with him, but that Lepidus and Antony, Sextus, Brutus, and Cassius
were employing rebels, he feared that the city might become involved in
many wars,--civil wars,--at once, and be so torn asunder and exhausted as
not to be able to revive in any fashion; and so he manip