Oh what a splendid progress of yours was that in the months of April and May, when you attempted even to lead a colony to Capua!  How you made your escape from thence, or rather how you barely made your escape, we all know.  And now you are still threatening that city.  I wish you would try, and we should not then be forced to say “barely.”  However, what a splendid progress of yours that was!  Why need I mention your preparations for banquets, why your frantic hard-drinking?  Those things are only an injury to yourself; these are injuries to us.  We thought that a great blow was inflicted on the republic when the Campanian district was released from the payment of taxes, in order to be given to the soldiery; but you have divided it among your partners in drunkenness and gambling.  I tell you, O conscript fathers, that a lot of buffoons and actresses have been settled in the district of Campania.  Why should I now complain of what has been done in the district of Leontini?  Although formerly these lands of Campania and Leontini were considered part of the patrimony of the Roman people, and were productive of great revenue, and very fertile.  You gave your physician three thousand acres; what would you have done if he had cured you? and two thousand to your master of oratory; what would you have done if he had been able to make you eloquent?  However, let us return to your progress, and to Italy.

XL.  You led a colony to Casilinum, a place to which Caesar had previously led one.  You did indeed consult me by letter about the colony of Capua, (but I should have given you the same answer about Casilinum,) whether you could legally lead a new colony to a place where there was a colony already.  I said that a new colony could not be legally conducted to an existing colony, which had been established with a due observance of the auspices, as long as it remained in a flourishing state; but I wrote you word that new colonists might be enrolled among the old ones.  But you, elated and insolent, disregarding all the respect due to the auspices, led a colony to Casilinum, whither one had been previously led a few years before; in order to erect your standard there, and to mark out the line of the new colony with a plough.  And by that plough you almost grazed the gate of Capua, so as to diminish the territory of that flourishing colony.  After this violation of all religious observances, you hasten off to the estate of Marcus Varro, a most conscientious and upright man, at Casinum.  By what right? with what face do you do this?  By just the same, you will say, as that by which you entered on the estates of the heirs of Lucius Rubrius, or of the heirs of Lucius Turselius, or on other innumerable possessions.  If you got the right from any auction, let the auction have all the force to which it is entitled; let writings be of force, provided they are the writings of Caesar, and not your own; writings by which you are bound, not those by which you have released yourself from obligation.