I swear to you, the fortune of the Roman people appeared to me hard and cruel, while it for so many years beheld and endured that man triumphing over the republic. He had polluted the holiest religious observances with his debauchery; he had broken the most authoritative decrees of the senate he had openly bought himself from the judges with money; he had harassed the senate in his tribuneship; he had rescinded acts which had been passed for the sake of the safety of the republic, by the consent of all orders of the state; he had driven me from my country; he had plundered my property; he had burnt my house; he had ill-treated my children and my wife; he had declared a wicked war against Cnaeus Pompeius; he had made slaughter of magistrates and private individuals; he had burnt the house of my brother; he had laid waste Etruria; he had driven numbers of men from their homes and their professions. He kept pursuing and oppressing men; the whole state, all Italy, all the provinces, all foreign kingdoms could not contain his frenzy. Laws were already being drawn up in his house which were to hand us over to the power of our slaves. There was nothing belonging to any one, which he had taken a fancy to, which he did not think would become his in the course of this year. [88] No one was an obstacle to his expectations except Milo; the very man who was most able to be an obstacle to them he thought when he returned again would be reconciled and, as it were, bound to him. The power of Caesar, he said, was all his own. The inclinations of all good men he had treated with contempt, while accomplishing my ruin. Milo alone weighed on his mind. [cap.33]