a senate of the Roman people?  The men of Firmium deserve to be praised by a resolution of our order, who set the first example of promising money; we ought to return a complimentary answer to the Marrucini, who have passed a vote that all who evade military service are to be branded with infamy.  These measures are adopted all over Italy.  There is great peace between Antonius and these men, and between them and him!  What greater discord can there possibly be?  And in discord civil peace cannot by any possibility exist.  To say nothing of the mob, look at Lucius Nasidius, a Roman knight, a man of the very highest accomplishments and honour, a citizen always eminent, whose watchfulness and exertions for the protection of my life I felt in my consulship; who not only exhorted his neighbours to become soldiers, but also assisted them from his own resources; will it be possible ever to reconcile Antonius to such a man as this, a man whom we ought to praise by a formal resolution of the senate?  What? will it be possible to reconcile him to Caius Caesar, who prevented him from entering the city, or to Decimus Brutus, who has refused him entrance into Gaul?  Moreover, will he reconcile himself to, or look mercifully on the province of Gaul, by which he has been excluded and rejected?  You will see everything, O conscript fathers, if you do not take care, full of hatred and full of discord, from which civil wars arise.  Do not then desire that which is impossible:  and beware, I entreat you by the immortal gods, O conscript fathers, that out of hope of present peace you do not lose perpetual peace.

What now is the object of this oration?  For we do not yet know what the ambassadors have done.  But still we ought to be awake, erect, prepared, armed in our minds, so as not to be deceived by any civil or supplicatory language, or by any pretence of justice.  He must have complied with all the prohibitions and all the commands which we have sent him, before he can demand anything.  He must have desisted from attacking Brutus and his army, and from plundering the cities and lands of the province of Gaul; he must have permitted the ambassadors to go to Brutus, and led his army back on this side of the Rubicon, and yet not come within two hundred miles of this city.  He must have submitted himself to the power of the senate and of the Roman people.  If he does this, then we shall have an opportunity of deliberating without any decision being forced upon us either way.  If he does not obey the senate, then it will not be the senate that declares war against him, but he who will have declared it against the senate.