What hope then is there that there ever can be peace between the Roman people and the men who are besieging Mutina and attacking a general and army of the Roman people? Will there be peace with the municipal towns, whose great zeal is shown by the decrees which they pass, by the soldiers whom they furnish, by the sums which they promise, so that in each town there is such a spirit as leaves no one room to wish for a senate of the Roman people? The men of Firmium deserve to be praised by a resolution of our order, who set the first example of promising money; we ought to return a complimentary answer to the Marrucini, who have passed a vote that all who evade military service are to be branded with infamy. These measures are adopted all over Italy. There is great peace between Antonius and these men, and between them and him! What greater discord can there possibly be? And in discord civil peace cannot by any possibility exist. To say nothing of the mob, look at Lucius Nasidius, a Roman knight, a man of the very highest accomplishments and honour, a citizen always eminent, whose watchfulness and exertions for the protection of my life I felt in my consulship; who not only exhorted his neighbours to become soldiers, but also assisted them from his own resources; will it be possible ever to reconcile Antonius to such a man as this, a man whom we ought to praise by a formal resolution of the senate? What? will it be possible to reconcile him to Caius Caesar, who prevented him from entering the city, or to Decimus Brutus, who has refused him entrance into Gaul? Moreover, will he reconcile himself to, or look mercifully on the province of Gaul, by which he has been excluded and rejected? You will see everything, O conscript fathers, if you do not take care, full of hatred and full of discord, from which civil wars arise. Do not then desire that which is impossible: and beware, I entreat you by the immortal gods, O conscript fathers, that out of hope of present peace you do not lose perpetual peace.