Marcus Antonius on the Honor due to Caesar

Senators, we gather here today, in this most perilous of times, in order to fulfill our oath to the fatherland. The Senate has been called and so we come. But I must ask: where was this obedience to oath when a great leader, a leader who had established tranquility in the provinces, had administered most completely to the desires of the Roman people, and returned to Rome the glory and power it had lost, was murdered most viciously, in view of the gods residing within the sanctified temple, by those who had sworn an oath to protect him? Listen, conscript fathers. The streets remain quiet. The people of Rome have spoken through their silence. They hide, afraid because the man who fought heroically through all foreign lands so that the fatherland would remain protected, now lies dead, felled by hands that act, according to themselves, to protect the same fatherland by murdering its most valiant defender. What insanity! As I speak, this guardian, this father to us all, who, like a loving parent, extended clemency to so many of us here today when we had erred in our reasoning and actions, lies cold. Are we to let this man, whose body flowed with the most fiery passion for Rome, remain cold, or worse, flow instead with the icy waters of the river designated for the most base traitors? Let his death mirror his life; let him be honored like the hero he remains to be, who on occasions too frequent to mention by name, reported most heroic victories across the continent and beyond. But who, then, should fill the icy waters? What about those men who acted to tear apart the tunic of stability with treasonous arms, who have now endangered the Roman people and the fate of us all by removing the most celestial leader ordained to protect us and throwing Rome into certain anarchy? They claim to desire a Republic, but their actions breed the opposite of their desires, if those in fact are truly their desires, a fact which I doubt, for who could desire a Republic who also acts against the unanimous will of the citizens now paralyzed in fear, mourning in hiding the earthly passing of a leader destined to sit amongst the gods? Julius Caesar must be honored to the fullest; to do otherwise would be to give credence to the most nefarious men now residing within our fatherland; to do otherwise would serve to mock the gods, who had ordained Julius Caesar as the earthly fulfiller of their wills for the glory of Rome. Let Julius Caser go up in flames so that the gods may see from above that we have not desecrated their herald. Let there be open mourning in the forum, so that the gods may hear how we lament the fallen. Let there be statues erected in his memory, so that long in the future the gods will see and remember how we honored their gift to us. And then, after we agree that his honor must be maintained, that his life be recognized as divine, and after the Roman people have been granted their wishes to publicly worship their hero without fear, let us swiftly punish those conspirators who acted selfishly for a moment, a moment destined to spread the breadth of history in infamy, so that the gods will fully understand our commitment to the glory of Rome.