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17“These statements that I have made are no mere sophistries, but are intended to convince you that what I think and say is not for effect nor yet thoughts that have just chanced to occur to me on the spur of the moment, but rather are convictions regarding what at the outset I decided was both suitable and advantageous for me. Consequently you may not only be of good courage with reference to the present, but also hopeful as regards the future, when you reflect that, if I had really been using any pretence, I should not now be deferring my projects, but would have made them known this very day. 2However, I was never otherwise minded in times past, as, indeed, my acts themselves prove, and now I shall be far more eager than ever with all reasonableness to be, not your master,—Jupiter forbid!—but your champion, not your tyrant, but your leader. When it comes to accomplishing everything else that must be done on your behalf, I will be both consul and dictator, but when it comes to injuring any one of you, a private citizen. 3That, in fact, is the one thing which I think should not even be mentioned. For why should I put any one of you to death, who have done me no harm, when I have destroyed none of those who were not arrayed against me, no matter how zealously in general they had joined with some of my enemies against me, and when I have taken pity on all those who withstood me but once and in many cases have spared even those who fought against me a second time? 4Why should I bear malice toward any, seeing that I immediately burned all the documents that were found among the private papers both in Pompey’s and in Scipio’s tents, and that without reading or copying them? Let us, therefore, Conscript Fathers, confidently unite our interests, forgetting all past events as if they had been brought to pass by some supernatural force, 5and beginning to love each other without suspicion as if we were in some sort new citizens. In this way you will conduct yourselves toward me as toward a father, enjoying the forethought and solicitude which I shall give you and fearing nothing unpleasant, and I will take thought for you as for my children, 6praying that only the noblest deeds may ever be accomplished by your exertions, and yet enduring perforce the limitations of human nature, exalting the good citizens by fitting honours and correcting the rest so far as that is possible.
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