1I do not fear, judges, that, inflamed by the hatred of my personal enmity, I shall seem to spew these things out against him with more relish than truth. 1For although my hatred ought to have been especially great, yet he was so much the common enemy of all that in the common hatred mine stood at almost the same level. 1It cannot be said adequately, nor even imagined, how much crime, how much ruin there was in him. 79Indeed, consider it in this way, judges. 79Imagine in your minds — for our thoughts are free, and contemplate what they wish in such a way that we perceive what we see — imagine, then, in thought a picture of this proposal of mine: suppose I could bring it about that you acquit Milo, but only on condition that Publius Clodius comes back to life — why has fear shown in your faces?
79how would he affect you alive, when dead he has struck you with an empty thought? 79What then? 79if Gnaeus Pompey himself, who has such courage and fortune that he has always been able to do what no one but he could, if he, I say, had been able either to propose an inquiry into the death of Publius Clodius or to raise the man himself from the dead, which do you think he would rather have done? 79Even if out of friendship he had wished to call him up from the dead, for the sake of the state he would not have done it. 79So you sit as avengers of the death of a man whose life you would not want restored, if you thought it could be restored by you; and an inquiry has been set up into the killing of a man such that, if he could come back to life by that same law, that law would never have been passed.
79If, then, Milo were his killer, would he fear punishment, in confessing it, from those very people whom he had set free? 80Greeks give the honours of gods to those men who have killed tyrants — what I have seen at Athens, what in other cities of Greece! 80what religious rites established for such men, what songs, what hymns! 80they are consecrated almost to the worship and memory of immortals — and will you not only grant no honours to the preserver of so great a people, the avenger of so great a crime, but even allow him to be dragged off to punishment? 80He would confess, he would confess, I say, if he had done it, boldly and gladly, that he had done for the sake of everyone's liberty what ought not only to be confessed but even truly proclaimed.