[-8-] Who could be found more magnanimous than I (not to mention again my father deceased) or whose conduct more godlike? With so many fine soldiers at my back and citizens and allies (O Jupiter and Hercules!), that love me, supreme over the entire sea within the Pillars of Hercules except a very few tribes, possessing both cities and provinces on all the continents, at a time when there is no longer any foreign enemy opposing me and there is no disturbance at home, but you all are at peace, harmonious and strong, and greatest of all are willingly obedient,--under such conditions I voluntarily, of my own motion, resign so great a dominion and alienate so vast a property. For if Horatius, Mucius, Curtius, Regulus, the Decii wished to encounter danger and death with the object of seeming to have done a great and noble deed, why should I not even more desire to do this as a result of which I shall while alive excel both them and all the rest of mankind in glory? No one of you should think that whereas the ancient Romans pursued excellence and good repute, all manliness has now become extinct in the city. Again, do not entertain a suspicion that I wish to betray you and confide you to any base fellows or expose you to mob rule, from which nothing good but all the most terrible evils always result to mankind. Upon you, upon you, the most excellent and prudent, I lay all public interests. The other course I should never have followed, had it been necessary for me to die or even to become monarch ten thousand times. This policy I adopt for my own good and for that of the city. I myself have undergone both labors and hardships and I can no longer hold out either in mind or in body. Furthermore I foresee the jealousy and hatred which rises in the breasts of some against the best men, and the plots which result from those feelings; and for that reason I choose rather to be a private citizen with glory than to be a monarch in danger. And the public business would be managed much better if carried on publicly and by many people at once than if it were dependent upon any one man.