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 with respect by you, and you received attentions from me in your canvass for the quaestorship.  And it was at that time, indeed, that you endeavoured to slay Publius Clodius in the forum, with the approbation of the Roman people; and though you made the attempt of your own accord, and not at my instigation, still you clearly alleged that you did not think, unless you slew him, that you could possibly make amends to me for all the injuries which you had done me.  And this makes me wonder why you should say that Milo did that deed at my instigation; when I never once exhorted you to do it, who of your own accord attempted to do me the same service.  Although, if you had persisted in it, I should have preferred allowing the action to be set down entirely to your own love of glory rather than to my influence.

You were elected quaestor.  On this, immediately, without any resolution of the senate authorizing such a step, without drawing lots, without procuring any law to be passed, you hastened to Caesar.  For you thought the camp the only refuge on earth for indigence, and debt, and profligacy,—­for all men, in short, who were in a state of utter ruin.  Then, when you had recruited your resources again by his largesses and your own robberies, (if, indeed, a person can be said to recruit, who only acquires something which he may immediately squander,) you hastened, being again a beggar, to the tribuneship, in order that in that magistracy you might, if possible, behave like your friend.

XXI.  Listen now, I beseech you, O conscript fathers, not to those things which he did indecently and profligately to his own injury and to his own disgrace as a private individual; but to the actions which he did impiously and wickedly against us and our fortunes,—­that is to say, against the whole republic.  For it is from his wickedness that you will find that the beginning of all these evils has arisen.

For when, in the consulship of Lucius Lentulus and Marcus Marcellus, you, on the first of January, were anxious to prop up the republic, which was tottering and almost falling, and were willing to consult the interests of Caius Caesar himself, if he would have acted like a man in his senses, then this fellow opposed to your counsels his tribuneship, which he had sold and handed over to the purchaser, and exposed his own neck to that axe under which many have suffered for smaller crimes.  It was against you, O Marcus Antonius, that the senate, while still in the possession of its rights, before so many of its luminaries were extinguished, passed that decree which, in accordance with the usage of our ancestors, is at times passed