liarly suited to your own audacity, that you sat among the
fourteen rows of the knights, though by the Roscian law there was a
place appointed for bankrupts, even if any one had become so.

XIX. But let us say no more of your profligacy and debauchery. There
are things which it is not possible for me to mention with honour; but
you are all the more free for that, inasmuch as you have not scrupled
to be an actor in scenes which a modest enemy cannot bring himself to
mention.

Mark now, O conscript fathers, the rest of his life, which I will
touch upon rapidly. For my inclination hastens to arrive at those
things which he did in the time of the civil war, amid the greatest
miseries of the republic, and at those things which he does every day.
And I beg of you, though they are far better known to you than they
are to me, still to listen attentively, as you are doing, to my
relation of them. For in such cases as this, it is not the mere
knowledge of such actions that ought to excite the mind, but the
recollection of them also. Although we must at once go into the middle
of them, lest otherwise we should be too long in coming to the end.

He was very intimate with Clodius at the time of his tribuneship;
he, who now enumerates the kindnesses which he did me. He was the
firebrand to handle all conflagrations; and even in his house he
attempted something. He himself well knows what I allude to. From
thence he made a journey to Alexandria, in defiance of the authority
of the senate, and against the interests of the republic, and in spite
of religious obstacles; but he had Gabinius for his leader, with whom
whatever he did was sure to be right. What were the circumstances of
his return from thence? what sort of return was it? He went from Egypt
to the furthest extremity of Gaul before he returned home. And what
was his home? For at that time every man had possession of his own
house; and you had no house anywhere, O Antonius. House, do you say?
what place was there in the whole world where you could set your foot
on anything that belonged to you, except Mienum, which you farmed with
your partners, as if it had been Sisapo?[15]

XX. You came from Gaul to stand for the quaestorship. Dare to say that
you went to your own father before you came to me. I had already
received Caesar's letters, begging me to allow myself to accept of your
excuses; and therefore, I did not allow you even to mention thanks.
After that, I was treated w