O ye immortal gods! how great an enterprise is it to uphold the character of a leader in the republic, for it requires one to be influenced not merely by the thoughts but also by the eyes of the citizens.  To take to one’s house the ambassador of an enemy, to admit him to one’s chamber, even to confer apart with him, is the act of a man who thinks nothing of his dignity, and too much of his danger.  But what is danger?  For if one is engaged in a contest where everything is at stake, either liberty is assured to one if victorious, or death if defeated, the former of which alternatives is desirable, and the latter some time or other inevitable.  But a base flight from death is worse than any imaginable death.  For I will never be induced to believe that there are men who envy the consistency or diligence of others, and who are indignant at the unceasing desire to assist the republic being approved by the senate and people of Rome.  That is what we were all bound to do, and that was not only in the time of our ancestors, but even lately, the highest praise of men of consular rank, to be vigilant, to be anxious, to be always either thinking, or doing, or saying something to promote the interests of the republic.

I, O conscript fathers, recollect that Quintus Scaevola the augur, in the Marsic war, when he was a man of extreme old age, and quite broken down in constitution, every day, as soon as it was daylight, used to give every one an opportunity of consulting him, nor, throughout all that war, did any one ever see him in bed, and, though old and weak, he was the first man to come into the senate house.  I wish, above all things, that those who ought to do so would imitate his industry, and, next to that, I wish that they would not envy the exertions of another.

XI.  In truth, O conscript fathers, now we have begun to entertain hopes of liberty again, after a period of six years, during which we have been deprived of it, having endured slavery longer than prudent and industrious prisoners usually do, what watchfulness, what anxiety, what exertions ought we to shrink from, for the sake of delivering the Roman people?  In truth, O conscript fathers, though men who have had the honours conferred on them that we have, usually wear their gowns, while the rest of the city is in the robe of war, still I decided that at such a momentous crisis, and when the whole republic was in so disturbed a state, we would not differ in our dress from you and the rest of the citizens.  For we men of consular rank are not in this war conducting ourselves in such a manner that the Roman people will be likely to look with equanimity on the ensigns of our honour, when some of us are so cowardly as to have cast away all recollection of the kindnesses which they have received from the Roman people, some are so disaffected to the republic that they openly allege that they favour this enemy, and easily bear having our ambassadors despised and insulted by Antonius, while they wish