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2“Be not surprised, Caesar, if I shall try to turn your thoughts away from monarchy, even though I should derive many advantages from it, at least if it was you who held the position. For if it were to be profitable to you also, I should advocate it most earnestly; 2but since the privileges of a monarchy are by no means the same for the rulers as for their friends, but, on the contrary, jealousies and dangers fall to the lot of the rulers while their friends reap, without incurring either jealousies or dangers, all the benefits they can wish for, I have thought it right, in this question as in all others, to have regard, not for my own interests, but for yours and the state’s.
3“Let us consider, now, at our leisure all the characteristics of this system of government and then shape our course in whichever direction our reasoning may lead us. 4For surely no one will assert that we are obliged to choose monarchy in any and all circumstances, even if it be not profitable. If we choose it, people will think that we have fallen victims to our own good fortune and have been bereft of our senses by our successes, or else that we have been aiming at sovereignty all the while, making of our appeals to your father and of our devotion to his memory a mere pretext and using the people and the senate as a cloak, with the purpose, not of freeing these latter from those who plotted against them, but of making them slaves to ourselves. 5And either explanation involves censure for us. For who could help being indignant when he finds that we have said one thing and then discovers that we have meant another? Would he not hate us much more now than if we had at the outset laid bare our desires and set out directly for the monarchy? 6To be sure, men have come to believe that it somehow is an attribute of human nature, however selfish that may seem, to resort to deeds of violence; for every one who excels in any respect thinks it right that he should have more than his inferior, and if he meets with any success, he ascribes his success to the force of his own intelligence, whereas if he fails, he lays the blame for his failure upon the influence of the divine will. 7But, on the other hand, the man who, in following such a course, resorts to plotting and villainy, is, in the first place, held to be crafty and crooked, malicious, and depraved,—an opinion which I know you would not allow anyone to express or to entertain about you, even if you might rule the whole world by such practices; and, in the second place, if he succeeds, men think that the advantage he has gained is unjust, or if he fails, that his discomfiture is merited.
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