As to my
wife and children, whom for your glory I could freely sacrifice, I now
remove them from your rage; that by my blood alone may be expiated
whatever further mischief your fury meditates; and that the murder of the
great grandson of Augustus, the murder of the daughter-in-law of Tiberius,
may not be added to mine, nor to the blackness of your past guilt. For,
during these days of frenzy what has been too horrid for you to commit?
What so sacred that you have not violated? To this audience what name
shall I give? Can I call you _soldiers_? you who have beset with arms the
son of your Emperor, confined him in your trenches, and held him in a
siege? _Roman citizens_ can I call you? you who have trampled upon the
supreme authority of the Roman Senate? Laws religiously observed by common
enemies, you have profaned; violated the sacred privileges, and persons of
Ambassadors; broken the laws of nations. The deified Julius Caesar quelled
a sedition in his army by a single word: he called all who refused to
follow him, _townsmen_. The deified Augustus, when, after the battle of
Actium, the legions who won it lapsed into mutiny, terrified them into
submission by the dignity of his presence and an awful look.
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