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of you to be moved by the sense of sight alone, and to be less distressed when the same fact reaches you by hearsay, when it often appears even worse than it is.

² But (you will argue) you, like the rest of us, will have to say something you do not feel, and do something you do not approve. In the first place, it has ever been considered the mark of a wise man to yield to circumstances, in other words, to bow to the inevitable; in the second place, as matters now stand, things are not as bad as all that. Perhaps you are not at liberty to say what you think, but you are quite at liberty to say nothing. For all power has been put in the hands of one man, who follows no man's advice but his own, not even that of his own friends.

And it would have been much the same, if he^[1] whom we followed were in charge of the Republic. Can we possibly suppose that the man who in time of war, when we were all united by a common danger, took counsel of himself alone and a notorious clique of exceedingly indiscreet advisers, would have been likely to be less self-centred^[2] in the hour of his triumph than he had been when the issue was in the balance? And can you suppose that he who neither followed your excellently wise advice when you were consul, nor when your cousin discharged the functions of consul with your support, was inclined to avail himself of the counsel of either of you, would now, if he held everything in his hands, have been likely to desire the expression of our opinions?

³ All is misery in civil wars; our ancestors never even once had that experience; our generation has already had it several times; but nothing is more