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warnings and denunciations. For though I was absent during a great part of your consulship, yet even in my absence I used to be informed of what opinions you expressed in guarding against and foretelling this pernicious war, and I was myself present in the early days of your consulship, when, after a survey of all our civil wars, with a wealth of detail you urged the Senate, while they feared the warnings of the civil wars within their memory, to draw the inference that, as the earlier combatants had shown a ruthlessness hitherto quite unprecedented in the Republic, so whosoever should subsequently succeed in crushing the Republic by force of arms would display a tyranny far more intolerable. For men assume that what is done by precedent is also done by right; but they add to that precedent and contribute to it something, nay rather, a great deal of their own.

² And that is why you ought to remember, that those who failed to follow your authority and advice perished by their own folly, when your far-sightedness might have been their salvation. You will say "What consolation is that to me, amid this oppressive gloom, and what I may call the crumbling walls of the Republic?" Yes, it is undoubtedly a sorrow that hardly admits of consolation; so overwhelming is the sense of universal loss without hope of recovery. And yet this is Caesar's own judgement of you, and the opinion of all your fellow-citizens—that your uprightness, your wisdom, and your worth, shine forth like some great light, when all other lights are quenched. This ought to conduce much to the alleviation of your troubles. Now as to your being away from your friends, that is the more easily to be