and I ought to add to it with greater danger. If you commit so base an action, it is probable that Cæsar, either from motives of virtue, or excited to it by hypocrisy, will punish you severely. If you think him generous, you must conclude that he will be extremely irritated against you, both for your cruelty, and your ingratitude, and because you offered him a provoking indignity, by supposing him capable of accepting a treachery for a compliment; and because also, you deprived him of a precious opportunity, of manifesting his clemency to Pompey in distress. If you consider him only as an ambitious and profound politician, you may suppose he will act the same part from motives of dissimulation, that he would have acted from motives of generosity, and to gain credit with the world, would treat you as a delinquent. You will have none of this to apprehend, when, forced to it by necessity, you find yourself obliged to deliver up Pompey, because in this last case, the reasons for treating you in the manner we have just been describing will not exist, and because also it was never known, that Cæsar failed to preserve the faith of his engagements, or that he treated with cruelty, those he had vanquished. LXV. Nor should we omit, that Cæsar’s good opinion of your personal conduct to Pompey, may co-operate with his virtue, and have an influence on his policy. Cæsar is not ignorant, that you have always been well affected to Pompey and his cause, and when Cæsar finds Pompey has perished by your hands, he will readily conclude, that you would have dealt the same treatment to him, and with a better will, provided the victor had been the vanquished. Consider now, what sort of an opinion Cæsar must entertain of you, when he reflects, that your not committing the same treachery by him, is owing to his fortune, and not your good-will, but that in spite of your malevolent disposition, his fortune has insured his safety.