M. Tullius Cicero, On the Consular Provinces
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

I am well aware, O conscript fathers, that you have decreed many extraordinary honours to Caius Caesar; honours which are almost unprecedented. In that he has amply merited them, you have been grateful; if I add, too, that he is a man most thoroughly attached to this order of the senate, you have been wise and provident. For this order has never heaped its distinctions and kindness on any one who has subsequently thought any dignity preferable to that which he had obtained by your favour. For it is not possible for any one to be the leading man in this body who has preferred courting the favour of the people. But all men who have done this, have either distrusted themselves on account of their consciousness of their want of worth, or else they have been driven away from a union with this order on account of the disparagement of their merits by the rest, and so they have been almost constrained to throw themselves out of this harbour on those stormy billows. And if, after they have been tossed about on those surges, and have become wearied of their voyage amid the whims of the people, having been successful in the conduct of the affairs of the republic, they show their faces again in the senate-house, and wish to gain the favours of this most honourable order, I say that they are not only not to be repelled, but are to be received with open arms, and courted. [39]

We are warned by the bravest man and most admirable consul who has ever existed in the memory of man, to take care that the nearer Gaul be not decreed against our will to any one after the election of those consuls who are now about to be elected, and that it be not for the future occupied forever by these men who are the constant attackers of this order, by some turbulent system of currying favour with the mob. And although I am not indifferent to the evil consequences of such a measure, O conscript fathers, especially when warned of them by a consul of the greatest wisdom, and one who is an especial guardian of peace and tranquillity, still I think that there is an evil to be regarded with even more apprehension than that,—the evil, I mean, of diminishing the honours of most illustrious and powerful citizens, and rejecting their zeal for the maintenance of this order.

For even supposing that Caius Julius, having been distinguished by all sorts of extraordinary and unprecedented honours by the senate, were compelled to deliver up this province to one whom you would be very unwilling to see there, still I cannot possibly be induced to suspect that be would deprive that body of liberty by which he himself had the greatest glory conferred on him. Lastly, what disposition every one will have I know not; I am aware only of what my own hopes are. I, as a senator, am bound to take care, as far as I can, that no illustrious or powerful man shall appear to have any right to feel offended with this body. [40] These sentiments I should express out of regard to the republic, even were I ever so great an enemy to Caius Caesar.