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22“And do not, because he partly persuaded and partly compelled you to vote him certain privileges, imagine that this makes him less guilty or deserving of less punishment. 2Quite the reverse: for this very procedure he particularly deserves to be punished, because, after determining beforehand to commit many outrages, he not only accomplished some of them through you, but also employed against you yourselves the resources which came from you, which by deception he forced you to vote to him when you neither realised nor foresaw anything of the sort. 3For after you had abrogated of your own free will the positions of command assigned by Caesar or by the lot to each man, would you ever have allowed this fellow to distribute numerous appointments to his friends and companions, sending his brother Gaius to Macedonia, and assigning to himself Gaul together with the legions, which he had no occasion to use in your defence? 4Do you not recall how, when he found you in consternation over Caesar’s death, he carried out all the schemes that he chose, communicating some to you carefully dissimulated and at inopportune moments, and executing others on his own responsibility, thus adding villainy to his deception, while all his acts were accomplished by violence? At least he employed soldiers, and barbarians, too, against you. 5And need any one be surprised that in those days an occasional vote was passed which should not have been passed, when even now we have not obtained freedom to say and do anything that is needful in any other way than by the aid of a body-guard? If we had then been encompassed by this guard, he would not have obtained what some one may say he has obtained, nor would he have risen thereby to power and have done the deeds that followed. 6Accordingly, let no one retort that the rights which at his command and under compulsion and amid laments we had the appearance of giving him were legally and rightfully bestowed. For even in private business that is not observed as binding which a man does under compulsion from another.
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