1At this point the immortal gods, as I said above, put it into the mind of that desperate madman to lay an ambush for Milo. 1In no other way could that plague have perished; 1the state would never have avenged itself on him by its own right. 1The senate, I suppose, would have restrained him as praetor. 1Not even when it used to do that had it achieved anything against this same man as a private citizen. 89Or would the consuls have been brave in restraining a praetor? 89First, with Milo killed, he would have had his own consuls; 89next, what consul would be brave against a praetor by whom, as tribune, he remembered that consular courage had been most cruelly harassed?
89He would have overwhelmed everything, he would possess it, he would hold it; 89by a new law, which was found at his house with the rest of the Clodian laws, he would have made our slaves his own freedmen; 89finally, had the immortal gods not driven him to the idea that he, an effeminate man, should try to kill the bravest of men, you would have no state today. 90Would that man as praetor, or still more as consul — if only these temples and the very walls could have stood so long while he lived and awaited his consulship — would that man, in short, have done no harm while alive, when, after his death, one of his henchmen set fire to the senate house?
90What have we seen more wretched than that, more bitter, more mournful? 90that the temple of holiness, of dignity, of wisdom, of public counsel, the head of the city, the altar of the allies, the haven of all nations, the seat granted by the whole people to one order, should be set on fire, torn down, defiled, and that this should be done not by an ignorant mob, though even that would be wretched, but by one man? 90When he dared so much as burner for a dead man, what would he not have dared as standard-bearer for a living one? 90He threw him into the senate house of all places, so that dead he might burn the building he had overturned while alive.
91And are there people who complain about the Appian Way and say nothing about the senate house, and who think that the forum could have been defended against him while he breathed, when the senate house could not withstand his corpse? 91Raise him, raise him from the dead, if you can: will you break the onslaught of the living man, when you can scarcely withstand the fury of his unburied corpse? 91Unless indeed you withstood those who ran to the senate house with torches, to the temple of Castor with the fasces, and flew about the whole forum with swords. 91You saw the Roman people being slaughtered, a public meeting broken up with swords, while Marcus Caelius, tribune of the plebs, was being heard in silence, a man most courageous in public life, most steadfast in a cause once undertaken, devoted to the wishes of good men and the authority of the senate, and, in this odium or misfortune of Milo's, of singular, divine, incredible loyalty.