Chapter 7

Wherefore, in the first place, I both feel and acknowledge great obligations to Lucius Piso, who considered not what he was able to effect in the republic, but what it was his own duty to do; and, in the next place, I entreat of you, O conscript fathers, even if you have not quite the courage to agree with my speech and to adopt my advice, at all events to listen to me with kindness as you have always hitherto done.

In the first place, then, I declare my opinion that the acts of Caesar ought to be maintained: not that I approve of them; (for who indeed can do that?) but because I think that we ought above all things to have regard to peace and tranquillity. I wish that Antonius himself were present, provided he had no advocates with him. But I suppose he may be allowed to feel unwell, a privilege which he refused to allow me yesterday. He would then explain to me, or rather to you, O conscript fathers, to what extent he himself defended the acts of Caesar. Are all the acts of Caesar which may exist in the bits of note-books, and memoranda, and loose papers, produced on his single authority, and indeed not even produced, but only recited, to be ratified? And shall the acts which he caused to be engraved on brass, in which he declared that the edicts and laws passed by the people were valid for ever, be considered as of no power? I think, indeed, that there is nothing so well entitled to be called the acts of Caesar as Caesar's laws. Suppose he gave any one a promise, is that to be ratified, even if it were a promise that he himself was unable to perform? As, in fact, he has failed to perform many promises made to many people. And a great many more of those promises have been found since his death, than the number of all the services which he conferred on and did to people during all the years that he was alive would amount to.

But all those things I do not change, I do not meddle with. Nay, I defend all his good acts with the greatest earnestness. Would that the money remained in the temple of Ops! Bloodstained, indeed, it may be, but still needful at these times, since it is not restored to those to whom it really belongs. Let that, however, be squandered too, if it is so written in his acts. Is there anything whatever that can be called so peculiarly the act of that man who; while clad in the robe of peace, was yet invested with both civil and military command in the republic, as a law of his? Ask for the acts of Gracchus, the Sempronian laws will be brought forward; ask for those of Sulla, you will have the Cornelian laws. What more? In what acts did the third consulship of Cnaeus Pompeius consist? Why, in his laws. And if you could ask Caesar himself what he had done in the city and in the garb of peace, he would reply that he had passed many excellent laws; but his memoranda he would either alter or not produce at all; or, if he did produce them, he would not class them among his acts. But, however, I allow even these things to pass for acts; at some things I am content to wink; but I think it intolerable that the acts of Caesar in the most important instances, that is to say, in his laws, are to he annulled for their sake.