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38“Seeing all this, then, Conscript Fathers, let us no longer delay nor fall a prey to the indifference of the moment, but let us provide for the safety of the future. 2Is it not shameful, when Caesar, who has just emerged from boyhood and was but recently registered among the youths of military age, shows so great thought for the state as to spend his money and gather soldiers for its preservation, that we should neither choose to perform our duty ourselves nor to coöperate with him, even after obtaining a tangible proof of his good-will? 3For who does not realize that, if he had not arrived here with the soldiers from Campania, Antony would certainly have rushed at once from Brundisium, just as he was, and would have burst into our city with all his armies like a torrent? 4This also is disgraceful, that when the veterans have voluntarily placed themselves at your service for the present crisis, taking thought neither for their age nor for the wounds which they received in past years while fighting for you, you should both refuse to approve the war already declared by these very men, and show yourselves altogether inferior to them who are facing the dangers. 5For while you praise the soldiers who discovered the wickedness of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar,—that is, to you through him,—you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing. 6And yet we are grateful to Brutus because he not only did not admit Antony to Gaul in the first place, but is trying to repel him now that the other has made a campaign against him. Why in the world, then, do we not do the same ourselves? Why do we not imitate the rest whom we praise for their proper attitude?
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