municipalities, coming out from their towns under compulsion to meet
him, saluted not by the name by which she was well known on the stage,
but by that of Volumnia.[16] A car followed full of pimps; then a
lot of debauched companions; and then his mother, utterly neglected,
followed the mistress of her profligate son, as if she had been her
daughter-in-law. O the disastrous fecundity of that miserable woman!
With the marks of such wickedness as this did that fellow stamp every
municipality, and prefecture, and colony, and, in short, the whole of
Italy.

To find fault with the rest of his actions, O conscript fathers, is
difficult, and somewhat unsafe. He was occupied in war; he glutted
himself with the slaughter of citizens who bore no resemblance to
himself. He was fortunate--if at least there can be any good fortune
in wickedness. But since we wish to show a regard for the veterans,
although the cause of the soldiers is very different from yours; they
followed their chief; you went to seek for a leader; still, (that I
may not give you any pretence for stirring up odium against me among
them,) I will say nothing of the nature of the war.

When victorious, you returned with the legions from Thessaly to
Brundusium. There you did not put me to death. It was a great
kindness! For I confess that you could have done it. Although there
was no one of those men who were with you at that time, who did not
think that I ought to be spared. For so great is men's affection for
their country, that I was sacred even in the eyes of your legions,
because they recollected that the country had been saved by me.
However, grant that you did give me what you did not take away from
me; and that I have my life as a present from you, since it was not
taken from me by you; was it possible for me, after all your insults,