than one’s own father.  You wise and considerate man, what do you say to this?  If they are parricides, why are they always named by you, both in this assembly and before the Roman people, with a view to do them honour?  Why has Marcus Brutus[13] been, on your motion, excused from obedience to the laws, and allowed to be absent.  Why were the games of Apollo celebrated with incredible honour to Marcus Brutus? why were provinces given to Brutus and Cassius? why were quaestors assigned to them? why was the number of their lieutenants augmented?  And all these measures were owing to you.  They are not homicides then.  It follows that in your opinion they are deliverers of their country, since there can be no other alternative.  What is the matter?  Am I embarrassing you?  For perhaps you do not quite understand propositions which are stated disjunctively.  Still this is the sum total of my conclusion; that since they are acquitted by you of wickedness, they are at the same time pronounced most worthy of the very most honourable rewards.

Therefore, I will now proceed again with my oration.  I will write to them, if any one by chance should ask whether what you have imputed to me be true, not to deny it to any one.  In truth, I am afraid that it must be considered either a not very creditable thing to them, that they should have concealed the fact of my being an accomplice; or else a most discreditable one to me that I was invited to be one, and that I shirked it.  For what greater exploit (I call you to witness, O august Jupiter!) was ever achieved not only in this city, but in all the earth?  What more glorious action was ever done?  What deed was ever more deservedly recommended to the everlasting recollection of men?  Do you, then, shut me up with the other leaders in the partnership in this design, as in the Trojan horse?  I have no objection; I even thank you for doing so, with whatever intent you do it.  For the deed is so great an one, that I cannot compare the unpopularity which you wish to excite against me on account of it, with its real glory.

For who can be happier than those men whom you boast of having now expelled and driven from the city?  What place is there either so deserted or so uncivilized, as not to seem to greet and to covet the presence of those men wherever they have arrived?  What men are so clownish as not, when they have once beheld them, to think that they have reaped the greatest enjoyment that life can give?  And what posterity will be ever so forgetful, what literature will ever be found so ungrateful, as not to cherish their glory with undying recollection?  Enrol me then, I beg, in the number of those men.