funeral; and when abandoned men, with slaves like themselves, were
every day threatening with more and more vehemence all the houses and
temples of the city; so severe was the rigour of Dolabella, not
only towards the audacious and wicked slaves, but also towards the
profligate and unprincipled freemen, and so prompt was his overthrow
of that accursed pillar, that it seems marvellous to me that the
subsequent time has been so different from that one day.

For behold, on the first of June, on which day they had given notice
that we were all to attend the senate, everything was changed.
Nothing was done by the senate, but many and important measures were
transacted by the agency of the people, though that people was both
absent and disapproving. The consuls elect said, that they did not
dare to come into the senate. The liberators of their country were
absent from that city from the neck of which they had removed the yoke
of slavery; though the very consuls themselves professed to praise
them in their public harangues and in all their conversation. Those
who were called Veterans, men of whose safety this order had been most
particularly careful, were instigated not to the preservation of those
things which they had, but to cherish hopes of new booty. And as I
preferred hearing of those things to seeing them, and as I had an
honorary commission as lieutenant, I went away, intending to be
present on the first of January, which appeared likely to be the first
day of assembling the senate.

III. I have now explained to you, O conscript fathers, my design
in leaving the city. Now I will briefly set before you, also, my
intention in returning, which may perhaps appear more unaccountable.
As I had avoided Brundusium, and the ordinary route into Greece, not
without good reason, on the first of August I arrived at Syracuse,