[13]
And, O conscript fathers, remark how widely this decision of Caius Caesar
extends. For by it, all of us who, under the compulsion of some miserable
and fatal destiny of the republic, were driven to take up arms as we did,
though we are still not free from the fault of having erred as men may, are
at all events released from all imputation of wickedness. For when, at your
entreaty, he preserved Marcus Marcellus to the republic, he, at the same
time, restored me to myself and to the republic though no one entreated him
in my favour, and he restored all the other most honourable men who were in
the same case to ourselves and to their country; whom you now behold in
numbers and dignity present in this very assembly. He has not brought his
enemies into the senate-house; but he has decided that the war was
undertaken by most of them rather out of ignorance, and because of some
ungrounded and empty fear, than out of either any depraved desires or
cruelty.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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