1Next followed the war waged at Mutina. 1In this war, if I were to call him merely. 1Prudent, I should praise him less than I ought, since he was rather inspired, if one is to call by the name of divination a constant natural goodness which is shaken and diminished by no turns of fortune. 2Antony, declared a public enemy, had left Italy: there was no hope of his restoration. 2Not only his personal enemies, who were then very powerful and very numerous, but also those who were selling themselves to his opponents and hoped to gain some advantage by injuring him, were persecuting Antony's friends, longed to strip his wife Fulvia of all her property, and were even preparing to destroy his children.
3Atticus, though he enjoyed the closest friendship with Cicero and was a great friend of Brutus, not only gave them no encouragement towards harming Antony, but on the contrary sheltered his friends as far as he could as they fled from the city, and helped them with whatever they needed. 4To Publius Volumnius indeed he gave such help that no more could have come from a parent. 4To Fulvia herself, when she was distracted by lawsuits and harassed by great terrors, he performed his duty with such diligence that she never answered a summons to court without Atticus, and Atticus was her surety in everything. 5Indeed, when in her prosperity she had bought an estate on credit for a fixed date, and after her disaster could not raise a loan, he intervened and lent her the money without interest and without any formal bond, thinking it the greatest profit to be known as mindful and grateful, and at the same time showing that he was accustomed to be a friend not to fortune but to people.
6And when he was doing these things, no one could think he did them to suit the times: for it entered nobody's mind that Antony would gain supreme power. 7But his attitude was criticised by some of the optimates, because he seemed not to hate bad citizens enough. 7He, however, being a man of his own judgement, looked rather to what it was right for him to do than to what others would praise.