[91] "We raised Cæsar to his high place, serving him in war in conjunction with you and holding commands under him. We continued his friends so long that no one could imagine that we conspired against him on account of any private grudge. It was in time of peace that he sinned, not against us, his friends (for we were honored before others by him), but against the laws, against the order of the commonwealth. There was no longer any law supreme, either aristocratic or plebeian, nor any of the institutions that our fathers established when they expelled the kings and swore never to tolerate royal government again. We, descendants of the men who thus swore, sustained that oath and warded off the curse from ourselves. We could no longer endure that one man, although he was our friend and benefactor, should take from the people and vest in himself the control of the public money, the armies, and the elections, and from the Senate the appointment of governors of the provinces; that his will should take the place of the laws, his rule should supplant that of the people, and his supremacy that of the Senate in everything.
