disgraceful conceivable to admit.  But I will leave these to one side and bring forward the rest.  Well, though we did grant the trainer, as you say, two thousand plethra of the ager Leontinus, we still learned nothing adequate from it.[15] But who should not admire your system of instruction?  And what is it?  You are ever jealous of your superiors, you always toady to the prominent man, you slander him who has attained distinction, you inform against the powerful and you hate equally all the excellent, and you pretend love only for those through whom you may do some mischief.  This is why you are always inciting the younger against their elders and lead those who trust you even in the slightest into dangers, where you desert them. [-9-] A proof of this is, that you have never accomplished any achievement worthy of a distinguished man either in war or in peace.  How many wars have we won under you as praetor and what kind of territory did we acquire with you as consul?  Your private activity all these years has consisted in continually deceiving some of the foremost men and winning them to your side and managing everything you like, while publicly you have been shouting and bawling out at random those detestable phrases,—­’I am the only one that loves you,’ or, if it should so chance, ‘And what’s-his-name, all the rest, hate you,’ and ’I alone am friendly to you, all the rest are engaged in plots,’ and other such stuff by which you fill some with elation and conceit, only to betray them, and scare the rest so that you gain their attachment.  If any service is rendered by any one whomsoever of the whole people, you lay claim to it and write your own name upon it, repeating:  ’I moved it, I proposed it, it was through me that this was done so.’  But if anything happens that ought not to have occurred, you take yourself out of the way and censure all the rest, saying:  ’You see I wasn’t praetor, you see I wasn’t envoy, you see I wasn’t consul.’  And you abuse everybody everywhere all the time, setting more store by the influence which comes from appearing to speak your mind boldly than by saying what duty demands:  and you exhibit no important quality of an orator. [-10-] What public advantage has been preserved or established by you?  Who that was really harming the city have you indicted, and who that was really plotting against us have you brought to light?  To neglect the other cases,—­these very charges which you now bring against Antony are of such a nature and so many that no one could ever suffer any adequate penalty for them.  Why, then, if you saw us being wronged by him at the start, as you assert, did you never attack or accuse him at the time, instead of telling us now all the transgressions he committed when tribune, all his irregularities when master of horse, all his villanies when consul?  You might at once, at the time, in each specific instance, have inflicted the appropriate penalty upon him, if you had wanted to show yourself in very deed a patriot, and we could have imposed the punishment in security and safety during the course of the offences themselves.  One of two conclusions is inevitable,—­either that you believed this to be so at the time and renounced the idea of a struggle in our behalf, or else that you could not prove any of your charges and are now engaged in a reckless course of blackmail.