M. Tullius Cicero, In the Senate after his Return
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

1. If, O conscript fathers, I return you thanks in a very inadequate manner for your kindness to me, and to my brother, and to my children, (which shall never be forgotten by us,) I beg and entreat you not to attribute it so much to any coldness of my disposition, as to the magnitude of the service which you have done me. For what fertility of genius, what copiousness of eloquence can be so great, what language can be found of such divine and extraordinary power, as to enable any one, I will not say to do due honour to the universal kindness of you all towards us, but even to count up and enumerate all the separate acts of kindness which we have received from you? You have restored to me my brother; whom I have wished for above all things; you have restored me to my most affectionate brother; you have restored us parents to our children, and our children to us; you have restored to us our dignity, our rank, our fortunes, the republic, which we reverence above all things, and our country, than which nothing can be dearer to us; you have restored us, in short, to ourselves.

[2] And if we ought to consider our parents most dear to us, because by them our life, our property, our freedom, and our rights as citizens have been given to us; if we love the immortal gods, by whose kindness we have preserved all those things, and have also had other benefits added to them; if we are most deeply attached to the Roman people owing to the honours paid to us by whom we have been placed in this most noble council, and in the very highest rank and dignity and in this citadel of the whole earth, if we are devoted to this order of the senate by which we have been frequently distinguished by most honourable decrees in our favour, surely it is a boundless and infinite obligation which we are under to you, who, by your singular zeal and unanimity an my behalf, have combined at one time the benefits done us by our parents, the bounty of the immortal gods, the honours conferred on us by the Roman people, and your own frequent decisions in my case; in such a manner that, owing, as we do, much to you, and great gratitude to the Roman people, and innumerable thanks to our parents, and everything to the immortal gods, the honours and enjoyments which we had separately before by their instrumentality, we have now recovered all together by your kindness.