Caesar too, I suppose, made the law about the exiles which you have posted up.  I do not wish to press upon any one in misfortune; I only complain, in the first place, that the return of those men has had discredit thrown upon it, whose cause Caesar judged to be different from that of the rest; and in the second place, I do not know why you do not mete out the same measure to all.  For there can not be more than three or four left.  Why do not they who are in similar misfortune enjoy a similar degree of your mercy?  Why do you treat them as you treated your uncle? about whom you refused to pass a law when you were passing one about all the rest; and whom at the same time you encouraged to stand for the censorship, and instigated him to a canvass, which excited the ridicule and the complaint of every one.

But why did you not hold that comitia?  Was it because a tribune of the people announced that there had been an ill-omened flash of lightning seen?  When you have any interest of your own to serve, then auspices are all nothing; but when it is only your friends who are concerned, then you become scrupulous.  What more?  Did you not also desert him in the matter of the septemvirate?[22] “Yes, for he interfered with me.”  What were you afraid of?  I suppose you were afraid that you would be able to refuse him nothing if he were restored to the full possession of his rights.  You loaded him with every species of insult, a man whom you ought to have considered in the place of a father to you, if you had had any piety or natural affection at all.  You put away his daughter, your own cousin, having already looked out and provided yourself beforehand with another.  That was not enough.  You accused a most chaste woman of misconduct.  What can go beyond this?  Yet you were not content with this.  In a very full senate held on the first of January, while your uncle was present, you dared to say that this was your reason for hatred of Dolabella, that you had ascertained that he had committed adultery with your cousin and your wife.  Who can decide whether it was more shameless of you to make such profligate and such impious statements against that unhappy woman in the senate, or more wicked to make them against Dolabella, or more scandalous to make them in the presence of her father, or more cruel to make them at all?

XXXIX.  However, let us return to the subject of Caesar’s written papers.  How were they verified by you?  For the acts of Caesar were for peace’s sake confirmed by the senate; that is to say, the acts which Caesar had really done, not those which Antonius said that Caesar had done.  Where do all these come from?  By whom are they produced and vouched for?  If they are false, why are they ratified?  If they are true, why are they sold?  But the vote which was come to enjoined you, after the first of June, to make an examination of Caesar’s acts with the assistance of a council.  What council did you consult?  Whom did you ever invite to help you?  What was the first of June that you waited for?  Was it that day on which you, having travelled all through the colonies where the veterans were settled, returned escorted by a band of armed men?