to be tied about their necks, and had them thrown into a river.

LXVIII. In his early youth various aspersions of an infamous character
were heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an
effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, with earning his adoption from his
uncle by prostitution. Lucius Antony, likewise Mark's brother, charges
him with pollution by Caesar; and that, for a gratification of three
hundred thousand sesterces, he had submitted to Aulus Hirtius in the same
way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with burnt
nut-shells, to make the hair become softer [207]. Nay, the whole
concourse of the people, at some public diversions in the theatre, when
the following sentence was recited, alluding to the Gallic priest of the
mother of the gods [208], beating a drum [209],

Videsne ut cinaedus orbem digito temperet?
See with his orb the wanton's finger play!

applied the passage to him, with great applause.

(122) LXIX. That he was guilty of various acts of adultery, is not
denied even by his friends; but they allege in excuse for it, that he
engaged in those intrigues not from lewdness, but from policy, in order
to discover more easily the designs of his enemies, through their wives.
Mark Antony, besides the precipitate marriage of Livia, charges him with
taking the wife of a man of consular rank from table, in the presence of
her husband, into a bed-chamber, and bringing her again to the
entertainment, with her ears very red, and her hair in great disorder:
that he had divorced Scribonia, for resenting too freely the excessive
influence which one of his mistresses had gained over him: that his
friends were employed to pimp for him, and accordingly obliged both
matrons and ripe virgins to strip, for a complete examination of their
persons, in the same manner as if Thoranius, the dealer in slaves, had
them under sale. And before they came to an open rupture, he writes to
him in a familiar manner, thus: "Why are you changed towards me? Because
I lie with a queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with me, or
have I not done so for these nine years? And do you take freedoms with
Drusilla only? May health and happiness so attend you, as when you read
this letter, you are not in dalliance with Tertulla, Terentilla, Rufilla
[210], or Salvia Titiscenia, or all of them. What matters it to you
where, or upon whom, you spend your manly vigour?"

LXX. A private entertainment which