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15.
[37]
You have thrown in my teeth the camp of Pompeius and all my conduct at that time.
At which time, indeed, if, as I have said before, my counsels and my authority
had prevailed, you would this day be in indigence, we should be free and the
republic would not have lost so many generals and so many armies. For I confess
that, when I saw that these things certainly would happen, which now have
happened, I was as greatly grieved as all the other virtuous citizens would have
been if they had foreseen the same things. I did grieve, I did grieve, O
conscript fathers, that the republic which had once been saved by your counsels
and mine, was fated to perish in a short time. Nor was I so inexperienced in and
ignorant of this nature of things, as to be disheartened on account of a
fondness for life, which while it endured would wear me out with anguish, and
when brought to an end would release me from all trouble. But I was desirous
that those most illustrious men, the lights of the republic, should live: so
many men of consular rank, so many men of praetorian rank, so many most
honorable senators; and besides them all the flower of our nobility and of our
youth; and the armies of excellent citizens. And if they were still alive, under
ever such hard conditions of peace (for any sort of peace with our
fellow-citizens appeared to me more desirable than civil war), we should be
still this day enjoying the republic.
[38]
And if my opinion had prevailed, and if those
men, the preservation of whose lives was my main object, elated with the hope of
victory, had not been my chief opposers, to say nothing of other results, at all
events you would never have continued in this order, or rather in this city. But
say you, my speech alienated from me the regard of Pompeius? Was there any one
to whom he was more attached? any one with whom he conversed or shared his
counsels more frequently? It was, indeed, a great thing that we, differing as we
did respecting the general interests of the republic, should continue in
uninterrupted friendship. But I saw clearly what his opinions and views were,
and he saw mine equally. I was for providing for the safety of the citizens in
the first place, in order that we might be able to consult their dignity
afterward. He thought more of consulting their existing dignity. But because
each of us had a definite object to pursue, our disagreement was the more
endurable.
[39]
But what that extra ordinary and
almost godlike man thought of me is known to those men who pursued him to
Paphos from the battle of
Pharsalia. No mention of me was ever made by him that was not the most honorable
that could be, that was not full of the most friendly regret for me; while he
confessed that I had had the most foresight, but that he had had more sanguine
hopes. And do you dare taunt me with the name of that man whose friend you admit
that I was, and whose assassin you confess yourself?
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