any one entreat of you, except that you would not desire the republic
to be entirely overthrown and destroyed; when neither the chief men of
the state by their entreaties, nor the elders by their warnings, nor
the senate in a full house by pleading with you, could move you from
the determination which you had already sold and as it were delivered
to the purchaser? Then it was, after having tried many other
expedients previously, that a blow was of necessity struck at you
which had been struck at only few men before you, and which none of
them had ever survived. Then it was that this order armed the consuls,
and the rest of the magistrates who were invested with either military
or civil command, against you, and you never would have escaped them,
if you had not taken refuge in the camp of Caesar.

XXII. It was you, you, I say, O Marcus Antonius, who gave Caius Caesar,
desirous as he already was to throw everything into confusion, the
principal pretext for waging war against his country. For what other
pretence did he allege? what cause did he give for his own most
frantic resolution and action, except that the power of interposition
by the veto had been disregarded, the privileges of the tribunes taken
away, and Antonius's rights abridged by the senate? I say nothing of
how false, how trivial these pretences were; especially when there
could not possibly be any reasonable cause whatever to justify any one
in taking up arms against his country. But I have nothing to do with
Caesar. You must unquestionably allow, that the cause of that ruinous
war existed in your person.

O miserable man if you are aware, more miserable still if you are not
aware, that this is recorded in writings, is handed down to men's
recollection, that our very latest posterity in the most distant ages
will never forget this fact, that the consuls were expelled from