M. Tullius Cicero, For King Deiotarius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

To him then came king Deiotarus in this miserable and fatal war, to him whom he had previously assisted in his regular wars against the enemies of Rome, and with whom he was bound, not only by ties of hospitality, but also by personal intimacy. And he came, either because he had been asked, as a friend; or because he had been sent for as an ally; or because he had been summoned, like one who had learnt to obey the senate; and last of all, he came as to a man flying, not to one pursuing others—that is to say, as a sharer of danger, not a partner in victory. Therefore, after the result of the battle of Pharsalia, he departed from Pompeius; he did not choose to persist in hopes of which he saw no end. He thought he had done quite enough to satisfy the claims of duty, if indeed he was under any such obligations, and that he had made quite mistake enough if he had ignorantly erred. He returned home; and all the time that you were engaged in the Alexandrian war, he consulted your interests. [14] He supported in his palaces and from his own resources the army of Cnaeus Domitius, that most distinguished man. He sent money to Ephesus to him whom you selected as the most faithful and most highly esteemed of all your friends. He gave him money a second time; he gave him money a third time for you to employ in the war, though be was forced to sell property by auction in order to raise it. He exposed his own person to danger and he was with you, serving in your army against Pharnaces, and he considered him as his own enemy because he was yours. And all those actions of his were accepted by you, O Caius Caesar, in such a spirit that you paid him the highest possible honours, and confirmed hint in the dignity and title of king. [15]

He, therefore, having been not only released from danger by you, but having been also distinguished by you with the highest honours, is now accused of having intended to assassinate you in his own house—a thing which you cannot in truth possibly suspect, unless you consider him to have been utterly mad. For, to say nothing of what a deed of enormous wickedness it would have been to assassinate his guest in the sight of his own household gods; what a deed of enormous unreasonableness it would have been to have extinguished the brightest light of all nations, and of all human recollection; what a deed of enormous ferocity it would have been to have had no dread of the conqueror of the whole earth; what a sign of an inhuman and ungrateful disposition it would have been to be found to behave like a despot to the very man by whom be had been addressed as a king;—to say nothing of all this, what a deed of utter frenzy would it have been to rouse all kings, of whom there were numbers on the borders of his own kingdom, all free nations, all the allies, all the provinces, all the arms, in short, of every people on earth against himself alone! To what misery would he not have exposed his kingdom, his house, his wife, and his beloved son, not merely by the accomplishment of such a crime, but even by the bare idea of it!