He begins by asking his supposed hearers how it has come to pass that during the last twenty years the Republic had had no enemy who was not also his enemy. "And you, Antony, whom I have never injured by a word, why is it that, more brazen-faced than Catiline, more fierce than Clodius, you should attack me with your maledictions? Will your enmity against me be a recommendation for you to every evil citizen in Rome? * * * Why does not Antony come down among us to-day?" he says, as though he were in the Senate and Antony were away. "He gives a birthday fete in his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps, or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy--the Nyms. Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says--Antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togae." "I will only say that you do not understand them or any other. Clodius was killed by my counsels--was he? What would men have said had they seen him running from you through the Forum--you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of the bookseller's shop?[206] * * * It was by my advice that Caesar was killed! I fear, O conscript fathers, lest I should seem to have employed some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me. Who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that glorious affair? Among those who did do the deed, whose name has been hidden--or, indeed, is not most widely known? Some had been inclined to boast that they were there, though they were absent; but not one who was present has ever endeavored to conceal his name."