If, O judges, everything was wanting to Marcus Fonteius in
 this cause; if he appeared before the court, having passed a disgraceful youth and an infamous
 life, having been convicted by the evidence of virtuous men of having discharged his duties as a
 magistrate (in which his conduct has been under your own eye) and as a lieutenant, in a most
 scandalous manner, and being hated by all his acquaintances; if in his trial he were overwhelmed
 with the oral and documentary evidence of the Narbonnese colonists of the Roman people, of our
 most faithful allies the Massilians, and of all the citizens of Rome ; still it would be your duty to take the greatest care, lest you should
 appear to be afraid of those men, and to be influenced by their threats and menaced terrors, who
 were so prostrate and subdued in the times of your fathers and forefathers, as to be
 contemptible. But now, when no good man says a word against
 him, but all your citizens and allies extol him; when those men attack him who have repeatedly
 attacked this city and this empire; and when the enemies of Marcus Fonteius threaten you and the
 Roman people; when his friends and relations come to you as suppliants, will you hesitate to
 show not only to your own citizens, who are mainly influenced by glory and praise; but also to
 foreign tribes and nations, that you, in giving your votes, prefer sparing a citizen to yielding
 to an enemy? Among other reasons, this, O judges, is a very great reason for his acquittal, to prevent any
 notable stain and disgrace from falling on our dominion, by news going to Gaul that the senate and knights of the Roman people gave their
 decisions in a criminal trial just as the Gauls pleased; being influenced not by their evidence,
 but by their threats. But in that case, if they attempt to make war upon us, we must summon up
 Caius Marius from the shades below, in order that he may be equal in war to that great man, that
 threatening and arrogant Induciomarus. Cnaeus Domitius and Quintus Maximus must be raised from
 the dead, that they may again subdue and crush the nation of the Allobroges and the other tribes
 by their arms; or, since that indeed is impossible, we must beg my friend Marcus Plaetorius to
 deter his new clients from making war, and to oppose by his entreaties their angry feelings and
 formidable violence; or, if he be not able to do so, we will ask Marcus Fabius, his junior
 counsel, to pacify the Allobroges, since among their tribe the name of Fabius is held in the
 highest honour, and induce them either to be willing to remain quiet, as defeated and conquered
 nations usually are, or else to make them understand that they are holding out to the Roman
 people not a terror of war, but a hope of triumph. 
 And if, even in the case of an ignoble defendant, it would
 not be endurable that those men should think they had effected anything by their threats, what
 do you think you ought to do in the case of Marcus Fonteius? concerning whom, O judges, (for I
 think that I am entitled to say this now, when I have almost come to the termination of two
 trials,) concerning whom, I say, you have not only not heard any disgraceful charge invented by
 his enemies, but you have not even heard any really serious reproach. Was ever any defendant,
 especially when he had moved in such a sphere as this man, as a candidate for honours, as an
 officer in command, and as a governor, accused in such a way, that no disgraceful act, no deed
 of violence, no baseness originating either in lust or insolence or audacity, was attributed to
 him, if not with truth, at least with some suspicious circumstances giving a reasonable
 colouring to the invention?