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The cause which prompted our most fearless and
excellent consuls to submit a motion on the first of January, concerning the
general state of the republic, arose from the decree which the senate passed by
my advice on the nineteenth of December. On that day, O Romans were the
foundations of the republic first laid. For then, after a long interval, the
senate was free in such a manner that you too might become free. On which day,
indeed,—even if it had been to bring to me the end of my
life—I received a sufficient, reward for my exertions, when you all
with one heart and one voice cried out together, that the republic had been a
second time saved by me. Stimulated by so important and so splendid a decision
of yours in my favor, I came into the senate on the first of January, with the
feeling that I was bound to show my recollection of the character which you had
imposed upon me, and which I had to sustain.
Therefore, when I saw that a nefarious war was waged against the republic, I
thought that no delay ought to be interposed to our pursuit of Marcus Antonius,
and I gave my vote that we ought to pursue with war that most audacious man,
who, having committed many atrocious enemies before, was at this moment
attacking a general of the Roman people and besieging your most faithful and
gallant colony; and that a state of civil war ought to be proclaimed; and I said
farther, that my opinion was that a suspension of the ordinary forms of justice
should be declared, and that the garb of war should be assumed by the citizens,
in order that all men might apply themselves with more activity and energy to
avenging the injuries of the republic, if they saw that all the emblems of a
regular war had been adopted by the senate.
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