himself if he pleases.  And as the general custom of our body was well known to me, and as I was hardly recovered from the fatigue of my journey, and was vexed with myself, I sent a man to him, out of regard for my friendship to him, to tell him that I should not be there.  But he, in the hearing of you all, declared that he would come with masons to my house; this was said with too much passion and very intemperately.  For, for what crime is there such a heavy punishment appointed as that, that any one should venture to say in this assembly that he, with the assistance of a lot of common operatives, would pull down a house which had been built at the public expense in accordance with a vote of the senate?  And who ever employed such compulsion as the threat of such an injury as to a senator? or what severer punishment has ever been he himself was unable to perform?  As, in fact, he has failed to perform many promises made to many people.  And a great many more of those promises have been found since his death, than the number of all the services which he conferred on and did to people during all the years that he was alive would amount to.

But all those things I do not change, I do not meddle with.  Nay, I defend all his good acts with the greatest earnestness.  Would that the money remained in the temple of Opis!  Bloodstained, indeed, it may be, but still needful at these times, since it is not restored to those to whom it really belongs.[7] Let that, however, be squandered too, if it is so written in his acts.  Is there anything whatever that can be called so peculiarly the act of that man who, while clad in the robe of peace, was yet invested with both civil and military command in the republic, as a law of his?  Ask for the acts of Gracchus, the Sempronian laws will be brought forward; ask for those of Sylla, you will have the Cornelian laws.  What more?  In what acts did the third consulship of Cnaeus Pompeius consist?  Why, in his laws.  And if you could ask Caesar himself what he had done in the city and in the garb of peace, he would reply that he had passed many excellent laws; but his memoranda he would either alter or not produce at all; or, if he did produce them, he would not class them among his acts.  But, however, I allow even these things to pass for acts; at some things I am content to wink; but I think it intolerable that the acts of Caesar in the most important instances, that is to say, in his laws, are to be annulled for their sake.

VIII.  What law was ever better, more advantageous, more frequently demanded in the best ages of the republic, than the one which forbade the praetorian provinces to be retained more than a year, and the consular provinces more than two?  If this law be abrogated, do you think that the acts of Caesar are maintained?  What? are not all the laws of Caesar respecting judicial proceedings abrogated by the law which has been proposed concerning the third decury?  And are you the