[-7-] “What need to set side by side his separate exploits,—­the conquest of Gaul, the subduing of Moesia, the subjugation of Egypt, the enslaving of Pannonia?  Or again Pharnaces, Juba, Phraates, the campaign against the Britons, the crossing of the Rhine?  Yet these are greater and more important deeds than all our forefathers performed in all previous time.  Still, any of these accomplishments scarcely deserves a place beside my present act, nor yet, indeed, does the fact that the civil wars, the greatest and most diverse that have occurred in the history of man, we fought to a successful finish, and that we made humane terms, overcoming all who withstood us, as enemies, and saving alive all who yielded, as friends; (so that if our city should ever again be fated to suffer from disaffection, we might pray that the quarrel should follow this same course).  For that in spite of our possessing such great power and standing at the summit of excellence and good fortune so that we might govern you willing or unwilling, we should neither lose our heads nor desire sole supremacy, but that instead he should reject it when offered and I return it when given is a superhuman achievement.  I speak in this way not for idle boasting,—­I should not have said it at all if I were to derive any advantage whatever from it,—­but in order that you may see that whereas there are many public benefits to our credit and we have in private many lofty titles, we take greatest pride in this, that what others desire to gain even by doing violence to their neighbors we surrender without any compulsion.

[-8-] Who could be found more magnanimous than I (not to mention again my father deceased) or whose conduct more godlike?  With so many fine soldiers at my back and citizens and allies (O Jupiter and Hercules!), that love me, supreme over the entire sea within the Pillars of Hercules except a very few tribes, possessing both cities and provinces on all the continents, at a time when there is no longer any foreign enemy opposing me and there is no disturbance at home, but you all are at peace, harmonious and strong, and greatest of all are willingly obedient,—­under such conditions I voluntarily, of my own motion, resign so great a dominion and alienate so vast a property.  For if Horatius, Mucius, Curtius, Regulus, the Decii wished to encounter danger and death with the object of seeming to have done a great and noble deed, why should I not even more desire to do this as a result of which I shall while alive excel both them and all the rest of mankind in glory?  No one of you should think that whereas the ancient Romans pursued excellence and good repute, all manliness has now become extinct in the city.  Again, do not entertain a suspicion that I wish to betray you and confide you to any base fellows or expose you to mob rule, from which nothing good but all the most terrible evils always result to mankind.  Upon you, upon you, the most excellent and prudent, I lay all public interests.  The other