perished through your own crimes, and indigence, and infamy.

XI. But these are all old stories now. This charge, however, is quite
a modern one, that Caesar was slain by my contrivance. I am afraid, O
conscript fathers, lest I should appear to you to have brought up a
sham accuser against myself (which is a most disgraceful thing to do);
a man not only to distinguish me by the praises which are my due, but
to load me also with those which do not belong to me. For who ever
heard my name mentioned as an accomplice in that most glorious action?
and whose name has been concealed who was in the number of that
gallant band? Concealed, do I say? Whose name was there which was not
at once made public? I should sooner say that some men had boasted in
order to appear to have been concerned in that conspiracy, though they
had in reality known nothing of it, than that any one who had been
an accomplice in it could have wished to be concealed. Moreover, how
likely it is, that among such a number of men, some obscure, some
young men who had not the wit to conceal any one, my name could
possibly have escaped notice! Indeed, if leaders were wanted for
the purpose of delivering the country, what need was there of my
instigating the Bruti, one of whom saw every day in his house the
image of Lucius Brutus, and the other saw also the image of Ahala?
Were these the men to seek counsel from the ancestors of others rather
than from their own? and out of doors rather than at home? What? Caius
Cassius, a man of that family which could not endure, I will not say
the domination, but even the power of any individual,--he, I suppose,
was in need of me to instigate him? a man who, even without
the assistance of these other most illustrious men, would have
accomplished this same deed in Cilicia, at the mouth of the river
Cydnus, if Caesar had brought his ships to that bank of the river
which he had intended, and not to the opposite one. Was Cnaeus