[-46-] And I advise you, Calenus, and the rest who are of the same mind as you, to be quiet and allow the senate to vote the requisite measures and not for the sake of your private good-will toward Antony recklessly betray the common interests of all of us.  Indeed, I am of the opinion, Conscript Fathers, that if you heed my counsel I may enjoy in your company and with thorough satisfaction freedom and preservation, but that if you vote anything different, I shall choose to die rather than to live.  I have, in general, never been afraid of death as a consequence of my outspokenness, and now I fear it least of all.  That accounts, indeed, for my overwhelming success, the proof of which lies in the fact that you decreed a sacrifice and festival in memory of the deeds done in my consulship,—­an honor which had never before been granted to any one, even to one who had achieved some great end in war.  Death, if it befell me, would not be at all unseasonable, especially when you consider that my consulship was so many years ago; yet remember that in that very consulship I uttered the same sentiment, to make you feel that in any and all business I despised death.  To dread any one, however, that was against you, and in your company to be a slave to any one would prove exceedingly unseasonable to me.  Wherefore I deem this last to be the ruin and destruction not only of the body, but of the soul and reputation, by which we become in a certain sense immortal.  But to die speaking and acting in your behalf I regard as equivalent to immortality.

[-47-] “And if Antony, also, felt the force of this, he would never have entered upon such a career, but would have even preferred to die like his grandfather rather than to behave like Cinna who killed him.  For, putting aside other considerations, Cinna was in turn slain not long afterward for this and the other sins that he had committed; so that I am surprised also at this feature in Antony’s conduct, that, imitating his works as he does, he shows no fear of some day falling a victim to a similar disaster:  the murdered man, however, left behind to this very descendant the reputation of greatness.  But the latter has no longer any claim to be saved on account of his relatives, since he has neither emulated his grandfather nor inherited his father’s property.  Who is unaware of the fact that in restoring many who were exiled in Caesar’s time and later, in accordance forsooth with directions in his patron’s papers, he did not aid his uncle, but brought back his fellow-gambler Lenticulus, who was exiled for his unprincipal life, and cherishes Bambalio, who is notorious for his very name, while he has treated his nearest relatives as I have described and as if he were half angry at them because he was born into that family.  Consequently he never inherited his father’s goods, but has been the heir of very many others, some whom he never saw or heard of, and others who are still living.  That is, he has so stripped and despoiled them that they differ in no way from dead men.”