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 plume yourselves on the scheme you have fostered and are about to hatch out. You are boobies. I'm here to make you see your folly, to persuade you to give up your purposes."

"You are always doing unexpected things, Caesar, and in unexpected ways," Crassus spoke in his tallowy voice. "But this passes belief. Do you really expect to persuade us by misnaming and browbeating us?"

"I am bursting with arguments," Caesar replied.

"You may argue till the Greek Kalends," Crassus affirmed, "but you'll never persuade me to halt now. No conceivable argument could make me forego this chance of pulling down that smug, opinionated, insufferable paragon of a Pompey."

"I tell you," Caesar asserted, "you are a fool. Instead of working against him you ought to make him work with you. Think of the team you and he and I would make. I control the voters, you have more money than any ten men alive and he has the entire army and navy ready to do anything he asks."

(Mucia could almost feel the gesture by which Crassus kept Clodius mute.)

"Instead of plotting to abolish or weaken his hold on the military, you ought to use it. If you ruin him some other man will come up with