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46And I advise you, Calenus, and the rest who are of the same mind as you, to be quiet and allow the senate to vote the requisite measures, and not for the sake of your private good-will toward Antony to betray the common interests of us all. 2For this is my feeling, Conscript Fathers, that if you heed my counsel, I shall very gladly enjoy freedom and safety with you, but that if you vote anything different, I shall choose to die rather than to live. 3For I have never at any time been afraid of death as a consequence of my outspokenness (this accounts, indeed, for my overwhelming success, the proof of which lies in the fact that you decreed a sacrifice and festival in memory of the deeds done in my consulship, an honour which had never before been granted to anybody except one who had achieved some great success in war) and now I fear it least of all. 4For death, if it befell me, would not be at all unseasonable, especially when you consider that my consulship was so many years ago (yet remember that in that very consulship I expressed the same sentiment, in order that you might pay heed to me in everything, knowing that I despised death), but to dread any one for what he may do against you, and to be a slave to any one in common with you would prove most unseasonable to me. 5Therefore I deem this last to be the ruin and destruction not only of the body but also of the soul and reputation, by which, and by which alone, we become in a certain sense immortal; but to die speaking and acting in your behalf I regard as equivalent to immortality.
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