XXV.  You came to Brundusium, to the bosom and embraces of your actress.  What is the matter?  Am I speaking falsely?  How miserable is it not to be able to deny a fact which it is disgraceful to confess!  If you had no shame before the municipal towns, had you none even before your veteran army?  For what soldier was there who did not see her at Brundusium? who was there who did not know that she had come so many days’ journey to congratulate you? who was there who did not grieve that he was so late in finding out how worthless a man he had been following?

Again you made a tour through Italy, with that same actress for your companion.  Cruel and miserable was the way in which you led your soldiers into the towns; shameful was the pillage in every city, of gold and silver, and above all, of wine.  And besides all this, while Caesar knew nothing about it, as he was at Alexandria, Antonius, by the kindness of Caesar’s friends, was appointed his master of the horse.  Then he thought that he could live with Hippia[17] by virtue of his office, and that he might give horses which were the property of the state to Sergius the buffoon.  At that time he had selected for himself to live in, not the house which he now dishonours, but that of Marcus Piso.  Why need I mention his decrees, his robberies, the possessions of inheritances which were given him, and those too which were seized by him?  Want compelled him; he did not know where to turn.  That great inheritance from Lucius Rubrius, and that other from Lucius Turselius, had not yet come to him.  He had not yet succeeded as an unexpected heir to the place of Cnaeus Pompeius, and of many others who were absent.  He was forced to live like a robber, having nothing beyond what he could plunder from others.

However, we will say nothing of these things, which are acts of a more hardy sort of villany.  Let us speak rather of his meaner descriptions of worthlessness.  You, with those jaws of yours, and those sides of yours, and that strength of body suited to a gladiator, drank such quantities of wine at the marriage of Hippia, that you were forced to vomit the next day in the sight of the Roman people.  O action disgraceful not merely to see, but even to hear of!  If this had happened to you at supper amid those vast drinking cups of yours, who would not have thought it scandalous?  But in an assembly of the Roman people, a man holding a public office, a master of the horse, to whom it would have been disgraceful even to belch, vomiting filled his own bosom and the whole tribunal with fragments of what he had been eating reeking with wine.  But he himself confesses this among his other disgraceful acts.  Let us proceed to his more splendid offences.