peril:  I shudder to think how you will receive it, O conscript fathers:  but still, out of regard for my unceasing desire to support and increase your dignity, I beg and entreat you, O conscript fathers, although it may be a bitter thing to hear, or an incredible thing that it should be said by Marcus Cicero, still to receive at first, without offence, what I am going to say, and not to reject it before I have fully explained what it is;—­I, who, I will say so over and over again, have always been a panegyrist, have always been an adviser of peace, do not wish to have peace with Marcus Antonius.  I approach the rest of my speech with great hope, O conscript fathers, since I have now passed by that perilous point amid your silence.

Why then do I not wish for peace?  Because it would be shameful; because it would be dangerous; because it cannot possibly be real.  And while I explain these three points to you, I beg of you, O conscript fathers, to listen to my words with the same kindness which you usually show to me.

What is more shameful than inconsistency, fickleness, and levity, both to individuals, and also to the entire senate?  Moreover, what can be more inconsistent than on a sudden to be willing to be united in peace with a man whom you have lately adjudged to be an enemy, not by words, but by actions and by many formal decrees?  Unless, indeed, when you were decreeing honours to Caius Caesar, well-deserved indeed by and fairly due to him, but still unprecedented and never to be forgotten, for one single reason,—­because he had levied an army against Marcus Antonius,—­you were not judging Marcus Antonius to be an enemy; and unless Antonius was not pronounced an enemy by you, when the veteran soldiers were praised by your authority, for having followed Caesar; and unless you did not declare Antonius an enemy when you promised exemptions and money and lands to those brave legions, because they had deserted him who was consul while he was an enemy.

IV.  What? when you distinguished with the highest praises Brutus, a man born under some omen, as it were, of his race and name, for the deliverance of the republic, and his army, which was waging war against Antonius on behalf of the liberty of the Roman people, and the most loyal and admirable province of Gaul, did you not then pronounce Antonius an enemy?  What? when you decreed that the consuls, one or both of them, should go to the war, what war was there if Antonius was not an enemy?  Why then was it that most gallant man, my own colleague and intimate friend, Aulus Hirtius the consul, has set out?  And in what delicate health he is; how wasted away!  But the weak state of his body could not repress the vigour of his mind.  He thought it fair, I suppose, to expose to danger in defence of the Roman people that life which had been preserved to him by their prayers.  What? when you ordered levies of troops to be made throughout all Italy, when you suspended all exemptions