we repelled by violence and our own personal exertions; it was you who set them on to attack our houses.  And yet you, as if you had wiped off all the soot and smoke in the ensuing days, carried those excellent resolutions in the Capitol, that no document conferring any exemption, or granting any favour, should be published after the ides of March.  You recollect yourself, what you said about the exiles; you know what you said about the exemption; but the best thing of all was, that you for ever abolished the name of the dictatorship in the republic.  Which act appeared to show that you had conceived such a hatred of kingly power that you took away all fear of it for the future, on account of him who had been the last dictator.

To other men the republic now seemed established, but it did not appear so at all to me, as I was afraid of every sort of shipwreck, as long as you were at the helm.  Have I been deceived? or, was it possible for that man long to continue unlike himself?  While you were all looking on, documents were fixed up over the whole Capitol, and exemptions were being sold, not merely to individuals, but to entire states.  The freedom of the city was also being given now not to single persons only, but to whole provinces.  Therefore, if these acts are to stand,—­and stand they cannot if the republic stands too,—­then, O conscript fathers, you have lost whole provinces; and not the revenues only, but the actual empire of the Roman people has been diminished by a market this man held in his own house.

XXXVII.  Where are the seven hundred millions of sesterces which were entered in the account-books which are in the temple of Ops? a sum lamentable indeed, as to the means by which it was procured, but still one which, if it were not restored to those to whom it belonged, might save us from taxes.  And how was it, that when you owed forty millions of sesterces on the fifteenth of March, you had ceased to owe them by the first of April?  Those things are quite countless which were purchased of different people, not without your knowledge; but there was one excellent decree posted up in the Capitol affecting king Deiotarus, a most devoted friend to the Roman people.  And when that decree was posted up, there was no one who, amid all his indignation, could restrain his laughter.  For who ever was a more bitter enemy to another than Caesar was to Deiotarus?  He was as hostile to him as he was to this order, to the equestrian order, to the people of Massilia, and to all men whom he knew to look on the republic of the Roman people with attachment.  But this man, who neither present nor absent could ever obtain from him any favour or justice while he was alive, became quite an influential man with him when he was dead.  When present with him in his house he had called for him though he was his host, he had made him give in his accounts of his revenue, he had exacted money from him; he had established one of his Greek retainers in his tetrarchy,