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36“I shall begin at the point where he began his public career, that is, with his earliest manhood. For this, indeed, is one of the greatest achievements of Augustus, that at the time when he had just emerged from boyhood and was barely coming to man’s estate, 2he devoted himself to his education just so long as public affairs were well managed by that demigod, Caesar, but when, after the conspiracy against Caesar, the whole State was thrown into confusion, he at one and the same time amply avenged his father and rendered much-needed assistance to you, neither fearing the multitude of his enemies nor dreading the magnitude of the responsibilities nor hesitating by reason of his own immaturity. 3Yet what deed like this can be cited of Alexander of Macedon or of our own Romulus, who perhaps above all others are thought to have performed some notable exploit in youth? But these men I shall pass over, lest from merely comparing them with him and using them as examples—and that among you who know them as well as I—I may be thought to be detracting from the virtues of Augustus. 4With Hercules alone and his exploits I might compare him, and should be thought justified in so doing, if that were all; but even so I should fall short of my purpose, in so far as Hercules in childhood only dealt with serpents, and when a man, with a stag or two and a boar which he killed,—oh, yes, and a lion, to be sure, albeit reluctantly and at somebody’s behest; 5whereas Augustus, not among beasts, but among men, of his own free will, by waging war and enacting laws, literally saved the commonwealth and gained splendid renown for himself. Therefore it was, that in recognition of these services you chose him praetor and appointed him consul at an age when some are unwilling to serve even as common soldiers.
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