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28“That this is true you also have learned by experience. Consider a moment: Marius for a time was strong amid civil strife; then he was driven out, collected a force, and accomplished—you know what. Likewise Sulla,—not to speak of Cinna or Strabo or the rest who came between,—powerful at first, later defeated, finally making himself master, was guilty of every possible cruelty. And why name the second Marius, or even that same Cinna, or Carbo? 2After that Lepidus, ostensibly with the purpose of punishing these men, got together a faction of his own and stirred up almost all Italy. When we at last got rid of him, too, remember what we suffered from Sertorius and from his fellow-exiles. 3What did Pompey, what did this Caesar himself do, to make no mention here of Catiline or Clodius? Did they not at first fight against each other, and that in spite of their relationship, and then fill with countless evils not only our own city or even the rest of Italy, but practically the entire world? 4Well then, after Pompey’s death and that great slaughter of the citizens, did any quiet appear? By no means. How could it? Africa knows, Spain knows, the multitudes who perished in each of those lands. 5What then? Did we have peace after this? Peace, when Caesar himself lies slain in this fashion, when the Capitol is occupied, when the Forum is filled with arms and the whole city with fear?
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