you yourself do not say that I had advised your attempt.  But as for Milo, it was not possible even for me to favour his action.  For he had finished the business before any one could suspect that he was going to do it.  Oh, but I advised it.  I suppose Milo was a man of such a disposition that he was not able to do a service to the republic if he had not some one to advise him to do it.  But I rejoiced at it.  Well, suppose I did; was I to be the only sorrowful person in the city, when every one else was in such delight?  Although that inquiry into the death of Publius Clodius was not instituted with any great wisdom.  For what was the reason for having a new law to inquire into the conduct of the man who had slain him, when there was a form of inquiry already established by the laws?  However, an inquiry was instituted.  And have you now been found, so many years afterwards, to say a thing which, at the time that the affair was under discussion, no one ventured to say against me?  But as to the assertion that you have dared to make, and that at great length too, that it was by my means that Pompeius was alienated from his friendship with Caesar, and that on that account it was my fault that the civil war was originated; in that you have not erred so much in the main facts, as (and that is of the greatest importance) in the times.

X. When Marcus Bibulus, a most illustrious citizen, was consul, I omitted nothing which I could possibly do or attempt to draw off Pompeius from his union with Caesar.  In which, however, Caesar was more fortunate than I, for he himself drew off Pompeius from his intimacy with me.  But afterwards, when Pompeius joined Caesar with all his heart, what could have been my object in attempting to separate them then?  It would have been the part of a fool to hope to do so, and of an impudent man to advise it.  However, two occasions did arise, on which I gave Pompeius advice against Caesar.  You are at liberty to find fault with my conduct on those occasions if you can.  One was when I advised him not to continue Caesar’s government for five years more.  The other, when I advised him not to permit him to be considered as a candidate for the consulship when he was absent.  And if I had been able to prevail on him in either of these particulars, we should never have fallen into our present miseries.

Moreover, I also, when Pompeius had now devoted to the service of Caesar all his own power, and all the power of the Roman people, and had begun when it was too late to perceive all those things which I had foreseen long before, and when I saw that a nefarious war was about to be waged against our country, I never ceased to be the adviser of peace, and concord, and some arrangement.  And that language of mine was well known to many people,—­“I wish, O Cnaeus Pompeius, that you had either never joined in a confederacy with Caius Caesar, or else that you had never broken it off.  The one conduct would have become your dignity, and the other would have been suited to your prudence.”  This, O Marcus Antonius, was at all times my advice both respecting Pompeius and concerning the republic.  And if it had prevailed, the republic would still be standing, and you would have perished through your own crimes, and indigence, and infamy.