XXXV.  With respect to all the things which Caesar was intending to do in the senate on the ides of March, I ask whether you have done anything?  I heard, indeed, that you had come down prepared, because you thought that I intended to speak about your having made a false statement respecting the auspices, though it was still necessary for us to respect them.  The fortune of the Roman people saved us from that day.  Did the death of Caesar also put an end to your opinion respecting the auspices?  But I have come to mention that occasion which must be allowed to precede those matters which I had begun to discuss.  What a flight was that of yours!  What alarm was yours on that memorable day!  How, from the consciousness of your wickedness, did you despair of your life!  How, while flying, were you enabled secretly to get home by the kindness of those men who wished to save you, thinking you would show more sense than you do!  O how vain have at all times been my too true predictions of the future!  I told those deliverers of ours in the Capitol, when they wished me to go to you to exhort you to defend the republic, that as long as you were in fear you would promise everything, but that as soon as you had emancipated yourself from alarm you would be yourself again.  Therefore, while the rest of the men of consular rank were going backwards and forwards to you, I adhered to my opinion, nor did I see you at all that day, or the next; nor did I think it possible for an alliance between virtuous citizens and a most unprincipled enemy to be made, so as to last, by any treaty or engagement whatever.  The third day I came into the temple of Tellus, even then very much against my will, as armed men were blockading all the approaches.  What a day was that for you, O Marcus Antonius!  Although you showed yourself all on a sudden an enemy to me; still I pity you for having envied yourself.

XXXVI.  What a man, O ye immortal gods! and how great a man might you have been, if you had been able to preserve the inclination you displayed that day;—­we should still have peace which was made then by the pledge of a hostage, a boy of noble birth, the grandson of Marcus Bambalio.  Although it was fear that was then making you a good citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty; your own audacity, which never departs from you as long as you are free from fear, has made you a worthless one.  Although even at that time, when they thought you an excellent man, though I indeed differed from that opinion, you behaved with the greatest wickedness while presiding at the funeral of the tyrant, if that ought to be called a funeral.  All that fine panegyric was yours, that commiseration was yours, that exhortation was yours.  It was you—­you, I say—­who hurled those firebrands, both those with which your friend himself was nearly burnt, and those by which the house of Lucius Bellienus was set on fire and destroyed.  It was you who let loose those attacks of abandoned men, slaves for the most part, which