[6]
But, if I alone were in danger, I would bear it, O Romans, with more equanimity; but there
appears to me to be some men determined, if they think that I have done anything wrongly not
only intentionally, but even by chance, to blame all of you for having preferred me to the
nobles. But I think, O Romans that I ought to endure everything rather than not discharge the
duties of my consulship in such a manner, as by all my actions and counsels to compel men to
praise your action and counsel with respect to me. There is also this added to the great
labour and difficulty which I see before me in discharging the duties of my office, that I
have made up my mind that I ought not to adopt the same rule and principle of conduct which
former consuls have; some of whom have carefully avoided all approach to this place, and the
sight of you, and others have at all events not been very fond of it. But I not only declare
in this place where it is exceedingly easy to do it, but I said in my very first speech on
the first of January, in the senate itself, which did not seem likely to be so favourable a
place for the expression, that I would be a consul in the interests of the people.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.