To rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism, or, at any rate, magnificence.

With Caesar his debts have been accounted happy audacity; his pillage of Gaul and Spain, and of Rome also, have indicated only the success of the great General; his cruelty, which in cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[82] I do not mean to draw a parallel between Caesar and Cicero.

No two men could have been more different in their natures or in their career.

But the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples dominated him.

I do not say that he always did what he thought to be right.