Page:Loeb Classical Library L205N (1958).djvu/105

sentiments, confirmed by my consulship, afterwards occasionally obscured, utterly suppressed before your consulship, but revived by you, have now been entirely renounced by those who should have fostered them; and that it is so, those who in the old days of our power were entitled optimates not only clearly show by their bearing and looks, whereby it is very easy to keep up a pretence, but have furthermore often impressed it upon us by their actual votes both in the Senate and on the bench.

¹⁸ And so it follows that among wise citizens—and a wise citizen is what I wish both to be and to have the credit of being—there ought to be a complete change both of opinion and purpose. For that same Plato, whose teaching I earnestly endeavour to follow, gives us this injunction—"to assert yourself in politics only so far as you can justify your measures to your fellow-citizens; for it is as wrong to use violence to your country as to one of your parents."^[1] And indeed he declares that the reason why he did not take part in public affairs was that, finding the people of Athens now almost in a state of dotage,^[2] and seeing that they could be ruled neither by argument nor by anything but force, while he despaired of their being persuaded, he did not deem it lawful that they should be forced.

My own position was different, inasmuch as my people were not in their dotage, and not being free to choose whether I should engage in politics or not, my hands were tied; but I rejoiced none the less that in one and the same cause^[3] it was allowed me to defend a policy at once advantageous to myself and right in the judgement of any honest man.