two of the men of consular rank are still left to us:
Lucius Cotta, a man of the greatest genius and the most consummate
prudence, proposed a supplication in my honour for those very actions
with which you find fault, in the most complimentary language, and
those very men of consular rank whom I have named, and the whole
senate, adopted his proposal; an honour which has never been paid to
any one else in the garb of peace from the foundation of the city
to my time. With what eloquence, with what firm wisdom, with what
a weight of authority did Lucius Caesar your uncle, pronounce his
opinion against the husband of his own sister, your stepfather. But
you, when you ought to have taken him as your adviser and tutor in all
your designs, and in the whole conduct of your life, preferred being
like your stepfather to resembling your uncle. I, who had no connexion
with him, acted by his counsels while I was consul. Did you, who
were his sister's son, ever once consult him on the affairs of the
republic?

But who are they whom Antonius does consult? O ye immortal gods, they
are men whose birthdays we have still to learn. To-day Antonius is not
coming down. Why? He is celebrating the birthday feast at his villa.
In whose honour? I will name no one. Suppose it is in honour of some
Phormio, or Gnatho, or even Ballio.[11] Oh the abominable profligacy
of the man! Oh how intolerable is his impudence, his debauchery, and
his lust! Can you, when you have one of the chiefs of the senate, a
citizen of singular virtue, so nearly related to you, abstain from
ever consulting him on the affairs of the republic, and consult men
who have no property whatever of their own, and are draining yours?

VII. Yes, your consulship, forsooth, is a salutary one for the state,
mine a mischievous one. Have you so entirely lost all shame as well
as all chastity, that you could venture to say this in that temple
in which I was consulting that senate which formerly in the full
enjoyment of its honours presided over the world? And did you place
around it abandoned men armed with swords? But you have dared besides
(what is there which you would not dare?) to say that the Capitoline
Hill, when I was consul, was full of armed slaves. I was offering
violence to the senate, I suppose, in order to compel the adoption of
those infamous decrees of the senate. O wretched man, whether those
things are not known to you, (for you know nothing that is good,) or
whether th