was already in reality under a tyranny through the fact that all the legions obeyed Caesar and all the people together with the senate submitted to him to such an extent that they voted among other measures that he should be dictator for life and use the appurtenances of a king.  Then he showed Caesar his error most convincingly and restrained him most prudently, until the latter, abashed and afraid, would not accept either the name of king or the diadem, which he had in mind to bestow upon himself even against our will.  Any other man would have declared that he had been ordered to do it by his master, and putting forward the compulsion as an excuse would have obtained pardon for it,—­yes, indeed, he would, when you think of what kind of votes we had passed at that time and what power the soldiers had secured.  Antony, however, because he was thoroughly acquainted with Caesar’s disposition and accurately aware of all he was preparing to do, by great good judgment succeeded in turning him aside from his course and retarding his ambitions.  The proof of it is that afterward he no longer behaved in any way like a monarch, but mingled publicly and unprotected with us all; and that accounts most of all for the possibility of his meeting the fate that he did.

[-18-] “This is what was done, O Cicero or Cicerulus or Ciceracius or Ciceriscus or Graeculus[17] or whatever you like to be called, by the uneducated, the naked, the anointed man:  and none of it was done by you, the clever, the wise, the user of much more olive oil than wine, you who let your clothing drag about your ankles not, by Jupiter, as the dancers do, who teach you intricacies of reasoning by their poses, but in order to hide the ugliness of your legs.  Oh no, it’s not through modesty that you do this, you who delivered that long screed about Antony’s habits.  Who is there that does not see these soft clothes of yours?  Who does not scent your carefully combed gray locks?  Who is there unaware that you put away your first wife who had borne you two children, and at an advanced age married another, a mere girl, in order that you might pay your debts out of her property?  And you did not even retain her, to the end that you might keep Caerellia fearlessly, whom you debauched when she was as much older than yourself as the maiden you married was younger, and to whom you write such letters as a jester at no loss for words would write if he were trying to get up an amour with a woman seventy years old.  This, which is not altogether to my taste, I have been induced to say, Conscript Fathers, in the hope that he should not go away without getting as good as he sent in the discussion.  Again, he has ventured to reproach Antony for a little kind of banquet, because he, as he says, drinks water, his purpose being to sit up at night and compose speeches against us,—­though he brings up his son in such drunkenness that the latter is sober neither night nor day.  Furthermore he undertook to make derogatory remarks about Antony’s mouth, this man who has shown so great licentiousness and impurity throughout his entire life that he would not keep his hands off even his closest kin, but let out his wife for hire and deflowered his daughter.