M. Tullius Cicero, On the Responses of the Haruspices
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[49] But then, when he had become elated by the hope that he might be able—as he had by his abominable wickedness crushed, as he fancied him who, though in the garb of peace, had proved the suppressor of domestic war—to put down also that great man who had been the conqueror of our foreign wars and foreign enemies, then was seized in the temple of Castor that wicked dagger which was nearly the destroyer of this empire. Then he, against whom no enemy's city had ever long continued shut—he, who had always broken through all straits, trampled on all heights, crushed, by his energy and valour, the opposing weapons of every foe, was himself besieged at home; and, by the counsels which he adopted, relieved me from the reproaches cast on my timidity by some ignorant people. For if it was miserable rather than disgraceful to Cnaeus Pompeius, that bravest of all men who have ever been born, not to be able to go abroad in the sight of men, and to be secluded from all public places, as long as that fellow was tribune of the people, and to put up with his threats, when he said in the public assembly that he wished to build a second piazza in Carinae,¹ to correspond to the one on the Palatine Hill; certainly, for me to leave my house was grievous as far as my own private grief was concerned, but glorious if you look only at the interests of the republic.