[cap.16] [45] Was the safety of any one of such consequence to me as to induce me to forget my own? or to make me contaminate the truth, which I had laid open, by any lie? Or do you suppose that I would assist any one by whom I thought that a cruel plot had been laid against the republic, and most especially against me the consul? But if I had been forgetful of my own severity and of my own virtue, was I so mad, as, when letters are things which have been devised for the sake of posterity, in order to be a protection against forgetfulness, to think that the fresh recollection of the whole senate could be beaten down by my journal?