But this, however it may be, I leave to thy judgment and to the verdict of the discerning.

Moreover, lest the course of events and the true facts should be hidden from posterity, I have myself committed to writing an account of the transaction.
'What need to speak of the forged letters by which an attempt is made to prove that I hoped for the freedom of Rome?
Their falsity would have been manifest, if I had been allowed to use the confession of the informers themselves, evidence which has in all matters the most convincing force.

Why, what hope of freedom is left to us?
Would there were any! I should have answered with the epigram of Canius when Caligula declared him to have been cognisant of a conspiracy against him.

"If I had known," said he, "thou shouldst never have known." Grief hath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that I should complain because impious wretches contrive their villainies against the virtuous, but at their achievement of their hopes I do exceedingly marvel.

For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous.
For this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, "If God exists, whence comes evil?
Yet whence comes good, if He exists not ?" However, it might well be that wretches who seek the blood of all honest men and of the whole senate should wish to destroy me also, whom they saw to be a bulwark of the senate and all honest men.