But what a pest, and how great a pest was it which he resisted?  For if Caius Antonius had been able to accomplish what he intended in his mind, (and he would have been able to do so if the virtue of Marcus Brutus had not opposed his wickedness,) we should have lost Macedonia, Illyricum, and Greece.  Greece would have been a refuge for Antonius if defeated, or a support to him in attacking Italy, which at present, being not only arrayed in arms, but embellished by the military command and authority and troops of Marcus Brutus stretches out her right hand to Italy, and promises it her protection.  And the man who proposes to deprive him of his army, is taking away a most illustrious honour, and a most trustworthy guard from the republic.  I wish, indeed, that Antonius may hear this news as speedily as possible, so that he may understand that it is not Decimus Brutus whom he is surrounding with his ramparts, but he himself who is really hemmed in.

V. He possesses three towns only on the whole face of the earth.  He has Gaul most bitterly hostile to him, he has even those men the people beyond the Po, in whom he placed the greatest reliance, entirely alienated from him, all Italy is his enemy.  Foreign nations, from the nearest coast of Greece to Egypt, are occupied by the military command and armies of most virtuous and intrepid citizens.  His only hope was in Caius Antonius; who being in age the middle one between his two brothers, rivalled both of them in vices.  He hastened away as if he were being driven away by the senate into Macedonia, not as if he were prohibited from proceeding thither.  What a storm, O ye immortal gods! what a conflagration! what a devastation! what a pestilence to Greece would that man have been, if incredible and godlike virtue had not checked the enterprise and audacity of that frantic man.  What promptness was there in Brutus’s conduct! what prudence! what valour!  Although the rapidity of the movement of Caius Antonius also is not despicable; for if some vacant inheritance had not delayed him on his march, you might have said that he had flown rather than travelled.  When we desire other men to go forth to undertake any public business, we are scarcely able to get them out of the city; but we have driven this man out by the mere fact of our desiring to retain him.  But what business had he with Apollonia? what business had he with Dyrrachium? or with Illyricum?  What had he to do with the army of Publius Vatinius, our general?  He, as he said himself, was the successor of Hortensius.  The boundaries of Macedonia are well defined; the condition of the proconsul is well known; the amount of his army, if he has any at all, is fixed.  But what had Antonius to do at all with Illyricum and with the legions of Vatinius?

But Brutus had nothing to do with them either.  For that, perhaps, is what some worthless man may say.  All the legions, all the forces which exist anywhere, belong to the Roman people.  Nor shall those legions which have quitted Marcus Antonius be called the legions of Antonius rather than of the republic; for he loses all power over his army, and all the privileges of military command, who uses that military command and that army to attack the republic.