held.  But this man’s ignorance is joined to impudence, nor does he know what an augur ought to know, nor do what a modest man ought to do.  And just recollect the whole of his conduct during his consulship from that day up to the ides of March.  What lictor was ever so humble, so abject?  He himself had no power at all; he begged everything of others; and thrusting his head into the hind part of his litter, he begged favours of his colleagues, to sell them himself afterwards.

XXXIII.  Behold, the day of the comitia for the election of Dolabella arrives.  The prerogative century draws its lot.  He is quiet.  The vote is declared; he is still silent.  The first class is called.[19] Its vote is declared.  Then, as is the usual course, the votes are announced.  Then the second class.  And all this is done faster than I have told it.  When the business is over, that excellent augur (you would say he must be Caius Laelius,) says,—­“We adjourn it to another day.”  Oh the monstrous impudence of such a proceeding!  What had you seen? what had you perceived? what had you heard?  For you did not say that you had been observing the heavens, and indeed you do not say so this day.  That defect then has arisen, which you on the first of January had already foreseen would arise, and which you had predicted so long before.  Therefore, in truth, you have made a false declaration respecting the auspices, to your own great misfortune, I hope, rather than to that of the republic.  You laid the Roman people under the obligations of religion; you as augur interrupted an augur; you as consul interrupted a consul by a false declaration concerning the auspices.

I will say no more, lest I should seem to be pulling to pieces the acts of Dolabella; which must inevitably sometime or other be brought before our college.  But take notice of the arrogance and insolence of the fellow.  As long as you please, Dolabella is a consul irregularly elected; again, while you please, he is a consul elected with all proper regard to the auspices.  If it means nothing when an augur gives this notice in those words in which you gave notice, then confess that you, when you said,—­“We adjourn this to another day,” were not sober.  But if those words have any meaning, then I, an augur, demand of my colleague to know what that meaning is.

But lest by any chance, while enumerating his numerous exploits, our speech should pass over the finest action of Marcus Antonius, let us come to the Lupercalia.

XXXIV.  He does not dissemble, O conscript fathers; it is plain that he is agitated; he perspires; he turns pale.  Let him do what he pleases, provided he is not sick, and does not behave as he did in the Minucian colonnade.  What defence can be made for such beastly behaviour?  I wish to hear, that I may see the fruit of those high wages of that rhetorician, of that land given in Leontini.  Your colleague was sitting in the rostra, clothed in purple robe,