1Pompey were a private citizen at this time, he ought still to be chosen and sent to so great a war; 1now, when to his other supreme advantages there is added this opportunity too, that he is present in those very regions, that he has an army, that he can at once take over from those who have armies, what are we waiting for? 1or why, with the immortal gods as our guides, do we not entrust this war against the kings too to the same man to whom everything else has been entrusted with the greatest benefit to the state? 51But, it is said, a most illustrious man and a great lover of the state, endowed with your most generous favours, Catulus, and likewise a man endowed with the highest distinctions of office, fortune, merit and talent, Hortensius, disagree with this plan.
51Their authority, I admit, has carried the greatest weight with you on many occasions and ought to carry weight; 51but in this case, although you know that the authorities of very brave and very illustrious men are opposed, we can nevertheless set authorities aside and search out the truth from the facts themselves and from reason, and all the more easily because these same men concede that everything I have said so far is true: that the war is necessary and great, and that all the highest qualities are found in Gnaeus Pompey alone. 52What, then, does Hortensius say? 52That if everything is to be given to one man, Pompey is most worthy of it, but that nevertheless everything ought not to be entrusted to one man.
52That argument is out of date now, refuted far more by facts than by words. 52For you yourself, Hortensius, with your great fluency and singular skill in speaking, spoke at length, gravely and eloquently, in the senate against a brave man, Gabinius, when he had proposed a law about appointing a single commander against the pirates, and from this very place you likewise made a great many speeches against that law. 53What then? 53at that time, by the immortal gods! 53if your authority had counted for more with the Roman people than the safety and true interest of the Roman people itself, would we today hold this glory and this empire over the world?
53Or did this seem to you to be an empire at the time when envoys, quaestors and praetors of the Roman people were being captured, when we were cut off from all the provinces from supplies both private and public, when all the seas were so closed to us that we could no longer conduct either private or public business overseas?