ervices.[59] Again, as to your expression, "the
reconciliation effected between us"--I do not understand why you speak
of "reconciliation" in the case of a friendship that had never been
broken. As to what you say, that your brother Metellus ought not "to
have been attacked by me for a mere word," in the first place I would
like to assure you that your feeling and fraternal partiality--so full
of human kindness and natural affection--meet with my warmest
approbation; in the next place I must claim your indulgence if I have in
any matter opposed your brother in the interests of the Republic, for my
devotion to the Republic is paramount. If, however, it is my personal
safety that I have defended against a most ruthless assault of his, I
think you should be content that I make no complaint even to you of your
brother's injurious conduct. Now, when I had become aware that he was
deliberately making every preparation to use his tribunician office to
my ruin, I appealed to your wife Claudia[60] and your sister Mucia[61]
(of whose kindness to me for the sake of my friendship with Pompey I had
satisfied myself by many instances) to deter him from that injurious
conduct. And yet, as I am sure you have heard, on the last day of
December he inflicted upon me--a consul and the preserver of my
country--an indignity such as was never inflicted upon the most disloyal
citizen in the humblest office: that is to say, he deprived me when
laying down my office of the privilege of addressing the people--an
indignity, however, which after all redounded to my honour. For, upon
his forbidding me to do anything but take the oath, I pronounced an oath
at once the most absolutely true and the most glorious in a loud
voice--an oath which the people swore also in a loud voice to be
absolutely true. Though I had actually suffered this signal indignity, I
yet on that same day sent common friends to Metellus to persuade him to
alter his resolution; to whom he answered that he was no longer free to
do so. And, in fact, a short time previously he _had_ said in a public
meeting that a man who had punished others without trial ought not
himself to be allowed the privilege of speech. What a model of
consistency! What an admirable citizen! So he deemed the man who had
saved the senate from massacre, the city from the incendiary, Italy from
war, deserving of the same penalty as that inflicted by the senate, with
the unanimous approval of all loyal citizens, up