You heard just now what was the statement made by a most admirable man.  I found, said he, his house, his wife, his children, all in great distress.  Good men marvelled at me, my friends blamed me for having been led by the hope of peace to undertake an embassy.  And no wonder, O Publius Servilius.  For by your own most true and most weighty arguments Antonius was stripped, I do not say of all dignity, but of even every hope of safety.  Who would not wonder if you were to go as an ambassador to him?  I judge by my own case, for with regard to myself I see how the same design as you conceived is found fault with.  And are we the only people blamed?  What? did that most gallant man speak so long and so precisely a little while ago without any reason?  What was he labouring for, except to remove from himself a groundless suspicion of treachery?  And whence did that suspicion arise?  From his unexpected advocacy of peace, which he adopted all on a sudden, being taken in by the same error that we were.

But if an error has been committed, O conscript fathers, owing to a groundless and fallacious hope, let us return into the right road.  The best harbour for a penitent is a change of intention.

III.  For what, in the name of the immortal gods! what good can our embassy do to the republic?  What good, do I say?  What will you say if it will even do us harm? Will do us harm?  What if it already has done us harm?  Do you suppose that that most energetic and fearless desire shown by the Roman people for recovery of their liberty has been damped and weakened by hearing of this embassy for peace?  What do you think the municipal towns feel? and the colonies?  What do you think will be the feelings of all Italy?  Do you suppose that it will continue to glow with the same zeal with which it burnt before to extinguish this common conflagration?  Do we not suppose that those men will repent of having professed and displayed so much hatred to Antonius, who promised us money and arms, who devoted themselves wholly, body, heart, and soul, to the safety of the republic?  How will Capua, which at the present time feels like a second Rome, approve of this design of yours?  That city pronounced them impious citizens, cast them out, and kept them out.  Antonius was barely saved from the hands of that city, which made a most gallant attempt to crush him.  Need I say more?  Are we not by these proceedings cutting the sinews of our own legions, for what man can engage with ardour in a war, when the hope of peace is suggested to him?  Even that godlike and divine Martial legion will grow languid at and be cowed by the receipt of this news, and will lose that most noble title of Martial, their swords will fall to the ground, their weapons will drop from their hands.  For, following the senate, it will not consider itself bound to feel more bitter hatred against Antonius than the senate.