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and Bibulus, when my opinions carried great weight in the Senate, the opinion of all loyal citizens was practically one.

¹³ Afterwards, when you were holding Eastern Spain with military command,^[1] and the Republic had not consuls, but merely dealers in provinces and the sutlers and paid agents of sedition,^[2] my head^[3] by some evil chance was tossed like an apple of discord into the welter of contending factions and civil strife.

And then at the critical moment, when there arose a demonstration of unanimity in my defence which was quite marvellous in the Senate, incredibly strong throughout Italy, unparalleled among all honest citizens, well, if you ask me what happened, I shall make no answer—so many are to blame and in such varying degrees—but only briefly remark that it was not the rank and file who failed me but the commanders. And in all this supposing for the moment that blame attaches to those who failed to defend me, no less attaches to those who left me in the lurch; and if any who may have been frightened are to be censured, much more do any who pretended to be frightened deserve reproach.

At any rate that well-known decision of mine may justly claim commendation in so far as I was unwilling to leave my fellow-citizens, whom I had once saved and who now were eager to save me, bereft of leaders as they were, to the mercy of an armed rabble of slaves, but chose rather that it should be made manifest to all the world, how powerful the unanimity of loyal citizens might have proved had they been allowed to fight for me in the days when I stood upright, seeing that they had been able to set me on my feet again when I lay prostrate;