IX.  However, I have been speaking hitherto to avoid the appearance of gratuitously opposing a man who is a great friend of mine, and who has showed me great kindness.  Although, can one deny a thing to a person who not only does not ask for it, but who even refuses it?  But, O conscript fathers, that proposition is unsuited to the dignity of the consuls, unsuited to the critical character of the times, namely, the proposition that the consuls, for the sake of pursuing Dolabella, shall have the provinces of Asia and Syria allotted to them.  I will explain why it is inexpedient for the republic, but first of all, consider what ignominy it fixes on the consuls.  When a consul elect is being besieged, when the safety of the republic depends upon his liberation, when mischievous and parricidal citizens have revolted from the republic, and when we are carrying on a war in which we are fighting for our dignity, for our freedom, and for our lives, and when, if any one falls into the power of Antonius, tortures and torments are prepared for him, and when the struggle for all these objects has been committed and entrusted to our most admirable and gallant consuls,—­shall any mention be made of Asia and Syria so that we may appear to have given any injurious cause for others to entertain suspicion of us, or to bring us into unpopularity?  They do indeed propose it, “after having liberated Brutus,”—­for those were the last words of the proposal, say rather, after having deserted, abandoned, and betrayed him.

But I say that any mention whatever of any provinces has been made at a most unseasonable time.  For although your mind, O Caius Pausa, be ever so intent, as indeed it is, on effecting the liberation of the most true and illustrious of all men, still the nature of things would compel you inevitably sometimes to turn your thoughts to the idea of pursuing Antonius, and to divert some portion of your care and attention to Asia and Syria.  But if it were possible, I could wish you to have more minds than one, and yet to direct them all upon Mutina.  But since that is impossible, I do wish you, with that most virtuous and all accomplished mind which you have got, to think of nothing but Brutus.  And that indeed, is what you are doing; that is what you are especially striving at, but still no man can I will not say do two things, especially two most important things, at one time but he cannot even do entire justice to them both in his thoughts.  It is our duty rather to spur on and inflame that excellent eagerness of yours, and not to transfer any portion of it to another object of care in a different direction.