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37Who is so simple as to decide whether a man is making war on us or not by his words rather than by his deeds? I claim that this is not the first time he has been unfriendly to us, now that he has abandoned the city and made a campaign against our allies and is assailing Brutus and besieging the cities; 2but in view of his former evil and licentious behaviour, not only after Caesar’s death but even in the latter’s lifetime, I decide that he has shown himself an enemy of our government and of our liberty and a plotter against them. 3For who that loved his country or hated tyranny would have committed a single one of the many and manifold offences which he has perpetrated? Surely he is proved to have been for a long time and in every way an enemy of ours, and the case stands thus. If we now take measures against him most speedily, we shall also recover all that has been lost; 4but if we neglect to do this and wait till he himself admits that he is plotting against us, we shall lose everything. For this he will never do, not even if he should actually march upon the city, any more than did Marius or Cinna or Sulla; 5yet if he gets control of affairs, he will not fail to act precisely as they did, or still worse. For men who are eager to accomplish some object are wont to say one thing, and those who have succeeded in accomplishing it are wont to do quite a different thing; to gain their end they pretend anything, but after obtaining it there is no desire they deny themselves. 6Furthermore, the latest comers always desire to surpass what their predecessors have ventured, thinking it a small achievement to behave like them because that has been done before, but preferring to do something original as the only thing worthy of themselves, because unexpected.
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