I saw this, O judges, that unless, while the recollection of the senate
 on the subject was still fresh, I bore evidence to the authority and to the particulars of this
 information by public records, hereafter some one, not Torquatus, nor any one like Torquatus,
 (for in that indeed I have been much deceived,) but some one who had lost his patrimony, some
 enemy of tranquillity, some foe to all good men, would say that the information given had been
 different; in order the more easily, when some gale of odium had been stirred up against all
 virtuous men, to be able, amid the misfortunes of the republic, to discover some harbour for his
 own broken vessel. Therefore, having introduced the informers into the Senate, I appointed
 senators to take down every statement made by the informers, every question that was asked, and
 every answer that was given. And what men they were! Not only
 men of the greatest virtue and good faith, of which sort of men there are plenty in the senate,
 but men, also, who I knew from their memory, from their knowledge, from their habit and rapidity
 of writing, could most easily follow everything that was said. I selected Caius Cosconius, who
 was praetor at the time; Marcus Messala, who was at the time standing for the praetorship;
 Publius Nigidius, and Appius Claudius. I believe that there is no one who thinks that these men
 were deficient either in the good faith or in the ability requisite to enable them to give an
 accurate report. 
 What followed? What did I do next? As I knew that the information was by these means entered
 among the public documents, but yet that those records would be kept in the custody of private
 individuals, according to the customs of our ancestors, I did not conceal it; I did not keep it
 at my own house; but I caused it at once to be copied out by several clerks, and to be
 distributed everywhere, and published and made known to the Roman people. I distributed it all
 over Italy, I sent copies of it into every province; I wish no one to be ignorant of that
 information, by means of which safety was procured for all. 
 And I took this precaution, though at so disturbed a time, and when all opportunities of acting
 were so sudden and so brief at the suggestion of some divine providence, as I said before, and
 not of my own accord, or of my own wisdom; taking care, in the first instance, that no one
 should be able to recollect of the danger to the republic, or to any individual, only as much as
 he pleased; and in the second place, that no one should be able at any time to find fault with
 that information, or to accuse us of having given credit to it rashly; and lastly, that no one
 should ever put any questions to me, or seek to learn anything from my private journals, lest I
 might be accused of either forgetting or remembering too much, and lest any negligence of mine
 should be thought discreditable, or lest any eagerness on my part might seem cruel. 
 But still, O Torquatus, I ask you, as your enemy was mentioned in the information, and as a
 full senate and the memory of all men as to so recent an affair was a witness of that fact; as
 my clerks would have communicated the information to you, my intimate friend and companion, if
 you had wished for it, even before they had taken a copy of it; when you saw that there were any
 incorrectnesses in it, why were you silent, why did you permit them? Why did you not make a
 complaint to me or to some friend of mine? or why did you not at least, since you are so well
 inclined to inveigh against your friends, expostulate passionately and earnestly with me? Do
 you, when your voice was never once heard at the time, when, though the information was read,
 and copied out, and published, you kept silence then,—do you, I say, now on a
 sudden dare to bring forward a statement of such importance? and to place yourself in such a
 position that before you can convict me of having tampered with the information, you must
 confess that you are convicted yourself of the grossest negligence, on your own information bid
 against yourself? 
 Was the safety of any one of such consequence to me as to induce me to forget my own? or to
 make me contaminate the truth, which I had laid open, by any lie? Or do you suppose that I would
 assist any one by whom I thought that a cruel plot had been laid against the republic, and most
 especially against me the consul? But if I had been forgetful of my own severity and of my own
 virtue, was I so mad, as, when letters are things which have been devised for the sake of
 posterity, in order to be a protection against forgetfulness, to think that the fresh
 recollection of the whole senate could be beaten down by my journal?