you should be liable to discouragement as a result of any failure in that department:  instead, I have chosen to begin with the ships where we are strongest and have a vast superiority over our antagonists, to the end that after a victory with these we may despise the infantry.  You know well that the whole outcome of the war depends on each side on our fleets.  If we come out victorious in this engagement, we shall suffer no harm from any of the rest but cut them off on a kind of islet,—­for all surrounding regions are in our possession,—­and without effort subdue them, if in no other way, by hunger.

[-20-] “Now I do not think that further words are necessary to tell you that we shall be struggling not for small or unimportant interests, but it will prove true that if you are zealous you will obtain the greatest rewards, but if careless will suffer the most frightful misfortunes.  What would they not do to us, if they should prevail, when they killed practically all the followers of Sextus that had been of any prominence, and even destroyed many followers of Lepidus that cooeperated with Caesar’s party?  But why should I mention this, seeing that they have removed Lepidus, who was guilty of no wrong and was further their ally, from all his powers as general and keep him under guard as if he were some captive?  They have further hounded for money all the freedmen in Italy and likewise other men who possess any land to such an extent as to force some of them to take up arms, with the consequence that not a few perished.  Is it possible that those who spared not their allies will spare us?  Will those who seized for funds the property of their own adherents refrain from our wealth?  Will they show humanity as victors who before victory have committed every conceivable outrage?  Not to spend time in speaking of the concerns of other people, I will enumerate the audacity that they have displayed toward us who stand here.  Who was ignorant that I was chosen a partner and colleague of Caesar and received charge of the management of public affairs equally with him, received similar honors and offices, and have been a great while now in possession of them?  Yet of all of them, so far as is in his power, I have been deprived; I have become a private citizen instead of a leader, an outcast from the franchise instead of consul, and this not by the action of the people or the senate but by his own act and that of his adherents, who do not comprehend that they are preparing a sovereign for themselves first of all.  For how could one speak of enactments of people and senate, when the consuls and some others fled straightway from the city, in order to escape casting any such vote?  How will that man spare either you or anybody else, when he dared while I was alive, in possession of such great power, a victor over the Armenians, to seek for my will, take it by violence from those who had received it, open it, and read it publicly?  And how will he manifest any humanity to others with whom he has no connection, when he has shown himself such a man toward me,—­his friend, his table companion, his relative?