M. Tullius Cicero, To the Citizens after his Return
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

I now, O Romans, having been restored to myself, to my friends, and to the republic, owing to the evidence of so many men, by this authority of the senate—by such great unanimity of all Italy—by such great zeal on the part of all good men—by the particular agency of Publius Lentulus, with the cooperation of all the other magistrates—while Cnaeus Pompeius was begging for my recall, and while all men favoured it and even the immortal gods showed their approbation of it by the fertility and abundance and cheapness of the crops,—promise you, O Romans, all that I can do. In the first place, I promise that I will always feel that reverential attachment to the Roman people which the most religious men are accustomed to feel for the immortal gods, and that your deity shall for the whole of my life be considered by me equally important and holy with that of the immortal gods. In the second place, since it is the republic herself that has brought me back into the city, I promise that I will on no occasion fail the republic. [19] But if any one thinks that either my inclinations are changed, or my courage weakened, or my spirit broken, he is greatly mistaken. All that the violence, and injustice, and the frenzy of wicked men could take from me, it has taken away, stripped me of, and destroyed; that which cannot be taken away from a brave man remains and shall remain. I saw that most brave man, a fellow-citizen of my own municipal town, Caius Marius, since, as if by some fatal necessity, we both had not only to contend with those who wished to destroy all these things, but with fortune also—still I saw him, when he was in extreme old age, with a spirit not only not broken on account of the greatness of his misfortunes, but even strengthened and refreshed by it. [20] And I heard him say that he had been miserable when he was deprived of his country which he had delivered from siege; when he heard that his property was taken possession of and plundered by his enemies; when he saw his young son a sharer of the same calamity; when, up to his neck in the marshes, he only preserved his body and his life by the aid of the Minturnensians, who thronged to the place and pitied him; when, having crossed over to Africa in a little boat, he had arrived as a beggar and a suppliant among those people to whom he himself had given kingdoms; but that now that he had recovered his dignity he would take care, as all those things which he had lost had been restored to him, still to preserve that fortitude of mind which he never had lost. But there is this difference between myself and him, that he used those means in which he was most powerful, namely his arms, in order to revenge himself on his enemies. I, too, will use the instrument to which I am accustomed; since it is in war and sedition that there is room for his qualities, but in peace and tranquillity that there is scope for mine. [21] And although he, in his angry mind, laboured for nothing but avenging himself on his enemies, I will only think of my enemies as much as the republic herself allows me.