[29]
But unless this city is now securely settled by your counsels and by your
institutions, your name will indeed be talked about very extensively, but
your glory will have no secure abode, no sure home in which to repose. There
will he also among those who shall be born hereafter, as there has been
among us, great disputes, when some with their praises will
extol your exploits to the skies, and others, perhaps, will miss something
in them,—and that, too, the most important thing of
all,—unless you extinguish the conflagration of civil war by the
safety of the country, so that the one shall appear to have been the effect
of destiny and the other the work of your own practical wisdom. Have regard,
then, to those judges who will judge you many ages afterwards, and who will
very likely judge you more honestly than we can. For their judgment will be
unbiased by affection or by ambition, and at the same time it will be
untainted by hatred or by envy.
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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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