[-13-] “Reflecting on these facts and the rest which I mentioned a little earlier, be prudent while you may, and restore to the people the arms, the provinces, the offices, and the funds.  If you do it at once and voluntarily, you will be the most famous of men and the most secure.  But if you wait for some force to be applied, perhaps you might suffer some disaster together with ill repute.  Here is evidence.  Marius, Sulla, Metellus, and Pompey at first, when they got control of affairs, refused to become princes, and by this attitude escaped harm.  Cinna, however, and Strabo,[2] the second Marius, Sertorius, and Pompey himself at a later date, through their desire for sovereignty perished miserably.  It is hard for this city which has been under a democracy for so many years and rules so many human beings to be willing to be a slave to any one.  You have heard that the people banished Camillus when he used white horses for his triumph:  you have heard that they overthrew Scipio after condemning him for some fraudulent procedure:  you remember how they behaved toward your father because they had some suspicion that he wanted monarchy.  Yet there have never been any better men than these.

“Moreover, I do not advise you merely to relinquish dominion, but to accomplish beforehand all that is advantageous for the public, and by decrees and laws to settle definitely whatever business needs attention, just as Sulla did.  For even if some of his ordinances were subsequently overthrown, yet the majority of them and the more important still hold their ground.  Do not say that even then some will indulge in factional quarrels, or I may be tempted to say again that all the more the Romans would not submit to a single ruler.  If we were to review all the calamities that might befall a nation, it would be most unreasonable for us to fear dissensions which are the outgrowth of democracy rather then the tyrannies which spring from monarchy.  Regarding the terrible nature of the latter I have not even undertaken to say a word.  It has been my wish not merely to inveigh against a proposition so capable of censure, but to show you this,—­that it is naturally such a regime that not even the most excellent men....[3]

[-14-] “They cannot easily persuade by frank argument men who possess less power, or succeed in their enterprises, because their subjects are not in accord with them.  Hence, if you have any care at all of your country, for whom you have fought so many wars, for whom you would gladly surrender your life, attune her to greater moderation and order her affairs with that in view.  For the privilege of doing and saving precisely what one pleases becomes in the case of sensible people, if you examine it, a cause of prosperity to all:  but in the case of the foolish, a cause of disaster.  Therefore he who confers authority upon such men is holding out a sword to a child and a madman; but he who gives it to the prudent, besides performing other services,