Italy, and with them Cnaeus Pompeius, who was the glory and light of
the empire of the Roman people; that all the men of consular rank,
whose health would allow them to share in that disaster and that
flight, and the praetors, and men of praetorian rank, and the tribunes
of the people, and a great part of the senate, and all the flower of
the youth of the city, and, in a word, the republic itself was driven
out and expelled from its abode. As, then, there is in seeds the cause
which produces trees and plants, so of this most lamentable war you
were the seed. Do you, O conscript fathers, grieve that these armies
of the Roman people have been slain? It is Antonius who slew them. Do
you regret your most illustrious citizens? It is Antonius, again, who
has deprived you of them. The authority of this order is overthrown;
it is Antonius who has overthrown it. Everything, in short, which we
have seen since that time, (and what misfortune is there that we
have not seen?) we shall, if we argue rightly, attribute wholly to
Antonius. As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this
republic,--the cause of war, the cause of mischief, the cause of ruin.
The rest of his tribuneship was like the beginning. He did everything
which the senate had laboured to prevent, as being impossible to be
done consistently with the safety of the republic. And see, now, how
gratuitously wicked he was even in accomplishing his wickedness.

XXIII. He restored many men who had fallen under misfortune. Among
them no mention was made of his uncle. If he was severe, why was he
not so to every one? If he was merciful, why was he not merciful to
his own relations? But I say nothing of the rest. He restored Licinius
Lenticula, a man who had been condemned for gambling, and who was a
fellow-gamester of his own. As if he could not play with a condemned
man; but in reality, in order to pay by a straining of the law in his
favour, what he had lost by the dice. What reason did you allege to