And although it is not possible to requite him with all the thanks to which he is entitled, still we ought to feel all the gratitude towards him which our minds are capable of conceiving.  For who is so ignorant of public affairs, so entirely indifferent to all thoughts of the republic, as not to see that, if Marcus Antonius could have come with those forces which he made sure that he should have, from Brundusium to Rome, as he threatened, there would have been no description of cruelty which he would not have practised?  A man who in the house of his entertainer at Brundusium ordered so many most gallant men and virtuous citizens to be murdered, and whose wife’s face was notoriously besprinkled with the blood of men dying at his and her feet.  Who is there of us, or what good man is there at all, whom a man stained with this barbarity would ever have spared; especially as he was coming hither much more angry with all virtuous men than he had been with those whom he had massacred there?  And from this calamity Caesar has delivered the republic by his own individual prudence, (and, indeed, there were no other means by which it could have been done.) And if he had not been born in this republic we should, owing to the wickedness of Antonius, now have no republic at all.

For this is what I believe, this is my deliberate opinion, that if that one young man had not checked the violence and inhuman projects of that frantic man, the republic would have been utterly destroyed.  And to him we must, O conscript fathers, (for this is the first time, met in such a condition, that, owing to his good service, we are at liberty to say freely what we think and feel,) we must, I say, this day give authority, so that he may be able to defend the republic, not because that defence has been voluntarily undertaken by him but also because it has been entrusted to him by us.

III.  Nor (since now after a long interval we are allowed to speak concerning the republic) is it possible for us to be silent about the Martial legion.  For what single man has ever been braver, what single man has ever been more devoted to the republic than the whole of the Martial legion? which, as soon as it had decided that Marcus Antonius was an enemy of the Roman people, refused to be a companion of his insanity; deserted him though consul; which, in truth, it would not have done if it had considered him as consul, who, as it saw, was aiming at nothing and preparing nothing but the slaughter of the citizens, and the destruction of the state.  And that legion has encamped at Alba.  What city could it have selected either more suitable for enabling it to act, or more faithful, or full of more gallant men, or of citizens more devoted to the republic?

The fourth legion, imitating the virtue of this legion, under the leadership of Lucius Egnatuleius, the quaestor, a most virtuous and intrepid citizen, has also acknowledged the authority and joined the army of Caius Caesar.