Nor does he say these things to me. O judges, weeping, as I now repeat them; but with the same unmoved countenance that you behold. For he says, he never did all the things which he had done for citizens who are ungrateful; ungrateful, he says, they are not. That they are timid and thinking too much of every danger, he does not deny. He says, that he treated the common people, and that multitude of the lower class which, while they had Publius Clodius for their leader, threatened the safety of all of you in such a way, in order to render all your lives more secure; that he not only subdued it by his virtue, but won it over at the expense of three estates which he inherited. Nor has he any apprehension that while he was conciliating the common people by his liberality, he was not also securing your attachment by his singular services to the republic. He says, that the good-will of the senate towards him has been repeatedly experienced by him in the times that have lately gone by; and that he shall carry with him, and ever retain in his recollection, the way in which you and all your order flocked to meet him, the zeal you showed in his behalf, and the kindness of your language to him, whatever may be the destiny which fortune allots to him. [96] He remembers, also, that the voice of the crier proclaiming his triumph, was the only thing wanting to him, but that he was declared consul by the unanimous vote of the people, and that was the great object of his ambition. And now if all these things are to go against him, it will be only the suspicion of guilt, not the reality of any crime, which has injured him. He adds this, which is unquestionably true; that brave and wise men are not in the habit of setting their hearts so much on the rewards for virtuous conduct as on the fact of their conduct being so; that he has never acted throughout his life in any but the most honourable manner, since there can be nothing better for a man to do than to deliver his country from dangers; that those men are happy for whom such conduct procures honour among their fellow-citizens, [97] but yet, that those men are not miserable who have exceeded their fellow-citizens in good deeds. Moreover, that of all the rewards of virtue, if one is to make an estimate of the different rewards, the most honourable of all is glory; that this is the only reward which can make amends for the shortness of life, by the recollection of posterity; which can cause us while absent, to be present when dead to be still alive; that this is the thing by the steps of which men appear to mount even to heaven. [98]