M. Tullius Cicero, On his House
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

Therefore your frenzy, being disconcerted, kept making vain attacks. For the bitterness of my fortune had exhausted all the violence of all the wicked citizens. In such terrible disaster and such wide-spread ruin, there was no room for any new cruelty. [65] Cato was next to me. Was there nothing which you could do beyond making him who had been my leader and guide in all my conduct a partner also in my misfortune? What? Could you banish him? What then? You could send him away for the money of Cyprus. One booty may have been lost; another will be sure to be found; only let this man be got out of the way. Accordingly, the hated Marcus Cato is commissioned to go to Cyprus, as if it was a kindness that was being conferred on him. Two men are removed, whom the wicked men could not bear the sight of; one by the most discreditable sort of honour, the other by the most honourable possible calamity. [66] And that you may be aware that that man had been an enemy not to their persons, but to their virtues, after I was driven out, and Cato despatched on his commission, he turns himself against that very man by whose advice and by whose assistance he was in the habit of saying in the assemblies that he had done and continued to do what he was then doing and everything which he had hitherto done. He thought that Cnaeus Pompeius, who he saw was in every one's opinion by far the first man in the city, would not much longer tolerate his frenzy. After he had filched out of his custody by treachery the son of a king who was our friend,—himself being an enemy and a prisoner,—and having provoked that most gallant man by this injury, he thought that he could contend with him by the aid of those troops against whom I had been willing to struggle at the risk of the destruction of all virtuous citizens, especially as at first he had the consuls to help him. But after a time Gabinius broke his agreement with him; but Piso continued faithful to him. [67] You saw what massacres that man then committed, what men he stoned, what numbers he made to flee; how easily by means of his armed bands and his daily plots did he compel Cnaeus Pompeius to absent himself from the forum and the senate-house, and to confine himself to his own house, even after he had been already deserted by the best part of his forces. And from this you may judge how great that violence was at its first rise, and when first collected together, when even after it was scattered and almost extinct it alarmed Cnaeus Pompeius in this way.