1These things you often said to me when these men were absent, and I said these things to you, Milo, while the same men were listening: 'You, indeed, I cannot praise enough, since you have such a spirit; but the more godlike that courage of yours is, the greater the pain with which I am torn from you. 1Nor indeed, if you are snatched from me, is there left me even that complaint to console me, that I can be angry with those from whom I shall have received so great a wound. 1For it will not be my enemies who snatch you from me, but my closest friends; not those who have at some time treated me badly, but those who have always treated me best.' 1You will never inflict on me, judges, so great a pain — and yet what pain could be so great? — but not even this very one, as to make me forget how highly you have always valued me.
1But if forgetfulness of this has seized you, or if you have taken offence at something in me, why is it not atoned for on my head rather than on Milo's? 1For I shall have lived gloriously, if something happens to me before I see so great an evil. 100Now one consolation sustains me: that no duty of love, none of zeal, none of devotion has been lacking on my part towards you, Titus Annius. 100For your sake I courted the enmity of the powerful; 100I often exposed my body and my life to the arms of your enemies; 100I threw myself down as a suppliant before many on your behalf; 100my goods and fortunes and those of my children I made common with your circumstances; 100finally, on this very day, if any violence has been prepared, if any struggle for life is to come, I claim it for myself.
100What remains now? 100what can I do in return for your services to me except to count whatever fortune is yours as my own? 100I do not refuse, I do not decline; and I beg you, judges, either to increase the kindnesses you have conferred on me by saving this man, or to recognise that they will perish in his ruin.