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⁸ Now though I had suffered so notable an insult, nevertheless, on that very day I sent some common friends of ours to Metellus to entreat him to abandon his intention; but his answer to them was that he had already committed himself. And he had, as a matter of fact, not long before publicly declared that a man who had punished others without a trial ought not himself to be granted the privilege of making a speech.

What a sterling character! What a peerless patriot! For, in his judgment, the man who had delivered the Senate-house from massacre, the City from incendiarism, and Italy from war, deserved the same punishment as that inflicted by the Senate, with the unanimous approval of all honest men, upon those who had purposed to fire the City, butcher the magistrates and the Senate, and fan the flames of a devastating war. And so I defied your brother Metellus to his face. For on the 1st of January I so dealt with him in the Senate on the political situation, as to convince him that the man with whom he would have to fight lacked neither courage nor determination. On the 3rd of January, when he began to develop his proposal,^[1] every other word of his speech was a challenge or a threat to me, and he had no more deliberate purpose in mind, than by any means in his power, not by legal procedure or fair argument, but by brute force and browbeating, to effect the overthrow of myself. Had I not stood up to him, in his hot-headed attack upon me, with some courage and spirit, who in all the world would not suspect that the fortitude I showed in my consulship was due to accident rather than to policy?

⁹ If you were not aware that Metellus harboured