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10.
[20]
We have, indeed, undertaken our present course of action with a great and almost
certain hope of liberty. But even if I allow that the events of war are
uncertain, and that the chances of Mars
are common to both sides, still it is worth while to fight for freedom at the
peril of one's life. For life does not consist wholly in breathing; there is
literally no life at all for one who is a slave. All nations can endure slavery.
Our state can not. Nor is there any other reason for this, except that those
nations shrink from toil and pain, and are willing to endure any thing so long
as they may be free from those evils; but we have been trained and bred up by
our forefathers in such a manner, as to measure all our designs and all our
actions by the standard of dignity and virtue. The recovery of freedom is so
splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.
But if immortality were to be the result of our avoidance of present danger,
still slavery would appear still more worthy of being avoided, in proportion as
it is of longer duration. But as all sorts of death surround us on all sides
night and day, it does not become a man, and least of all a Roman, to hesitate
to give up to his country that breath which he owes to nature.
[21]
Men flock together from all quarters to extinguish a general conflagration. The
veterans were the first to follow the authority of Caesar and to repel the
attempts of Antonius; afterward the Martial legion checked his frenzy; the
fourth legion crushed it. Being thus condemned by his own legions, he burst into
Gaul which he knew to be adverse
and hostile to him both in word and deed. The armies of Aulus Hirtius and Caius
Caesar pursued him, and afterward the levies of Pansa roused the city and all
Italy. He is the one enemy of all
men. Although he has with him Lucius his brother, a citizen very much beloved by
the Roman people, the regret for whose absence the city is unable to endure any
longer!
[22]
What can be more foul than that
beast? what more savage? who appears born for the express purpose of preventing
Marcus Antonius from being the basest of all mortals. They have with them
Trebellius, who, now that all debts are canceled, is become reconciled to them;
and Titus Plancus, and other like them; who are striving with all their hearts,
and whose sole object is to appear to have been restored against the will of the
republic. Saxa and Capho, themselves rustic and clownish men, men who never have
seen and who never wish to see this republic firmly established, are tampering
with the ignorant classes; men who are not upholding the acts of Caesar but
those of Antonius; who are led away by the unlimited occupation of the Campanian
district; and who I marvel are not somewhat ashamed when they see that they have
actors and actresses for their neighbors.
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