Brutus, and subdued some family vexation which he may have felt by his attachment to his country.  What other object had Caius Pansa in holding the levies which he did, and in collecting money, and in carrying the most severe resolutions of the senate against Antonius, and in exhorting us, and in inviting the Roman people to embrace the cause of liberty, except to ensure the deliverance of Decimus Brutus?  For the Roman people in crowds demanded at his hands the safety of Decimus Brutus with such unanimous outcries, that he was compelled to prefer it not only to any consideration of his own personal advantage, but even to his own necessities.  And that end we now, O conscript fathers, are entitled to hope is either at the point of being achieved, or is actually gained, but it is right for the reward of our hopes to be reserved for the issue and event of the business, lest we should appear either to have anticipated the kindness of the gods by our over precipitation, or to have despised the bounty of fortune through our own folly.

But since the manner of your behaviour shows plainly enough what you think of this matter, I will come to the letters which have arrived from the consuls and the propraetor, after I have said a few words relating to the letters themselves.

III.  The swords, O conscript fathers, of our legions and armies have been stained with, or rather, I should say, dipped deep in blood in two battles which have taken place under the consuls, and a third, which has been fought under the command of Caesar.  If it was the blood of enemies, then great is the piety of the soldiers; but it is nefarious wickedness if it was the blood of citizens.  How long, then, is that man, who has surpassed all enemies in wickedness, to be spared the name of enemy? unless you wish to see the very swords of our soldiers trembling in their hands while they doubt whether they are piercing a citizen or an enemy.  You vote a supplication; you do not call Antonius an enemy.  Very pleasing indeed to the immortal gods will our thanksgivings be, very pleasing too the victims, after a multitude of our citizens has been slain!  “For the victory,” says the proposer of the supplication, “over wicked and audacious men.”  For that is what this most illustrious man calls them; expressions of blame suited to lawsuits carried on in the city, not denunciations of searing infamy such as deserved by internecine war.  I suppose they are forging wills, or trespassing on their neighbours, or cheating some young men; for it is men implicated in these and similar practices that we are in the habit of terming wicked and audacious.  One man, the foulest of all banditti, is waging an irreconcileable war against four consuls.  He is at the same time carrying on war against the senate and people of Rome.  He is (although he is himself hastening to destruction, through the disasters which he has met with) threatening all of us with destruction, and devastation, and torments,