and bravest of the Roman knights.  But if you disapprove of a wife from Aricia, why do you approve of one from Tusculum?  Although the father of this most virtuous and excellent woman, Marcus Atius Balbus, a man of the highest character, was a man of praetorian rank; but the father of your wife,—­a good woman, at all events a rich one,—­a fellow of the name of Bambalio, was a man of no account at all.  Nothing could be lower than he was, a fellow who got his surname as a sort of insult, derived[26] from the hesitation of his speech and the stolidity of his understanding.  Oh, but your grandfather was nobly born.  Yes, he was that Tuditanus who used to put on a cloak and buskins, and then go and scatter money from the rostra among the people.  I wish he had bequeathed his contempt of money to his descendants!  You have, indeed, a most glorious nobility of family!  But how does it happen that the son of a woman of Aricia appears to you to be ignoble, when you are accustomed to boast of a descent on the mother’s side which is precisely the same?[27] Besides, what insanity is it for that man to say anything about the want of noble birth in men’s wives, when his father married Numitoria of Fregellae, the daughter of a traitor, and when he himself has begotten children of the daughter of a freedman.  However, those illustrious men Lucius Philippus, who has a wife who came from Aricia, and Caius Marcellus, whose wife is the daughter of an Arician, may look to this; and I am quite sure that they have no regrets on the score of the dignity of those admirable women.

VII.  Moreover, Antonius proceeds to name Quintus Cicero, my brother’s son, in his edict; and is so mad as not to perceive that the way in which he names him is a panegyric on him.  For what could happen more desirable for this young man, than to be known by every one to be the partner of Caesar’s counsels, and the enemy of the frenzy of Antonius?  But this gladiator has dared to put in writing that he had designed the murder of his father and of his uncle.  Oh the marvellous impudence, and audacity, and temerity of such an assertion! to dare to put this in writing against that young man, whom I and my brother, on account of his amiable manners, and pure character, and splendid abilities, vie with one another in loving, and to whom we incessantly devote our eyes, and ears, and affections!  And as to me, he does not know whether he is injuring or praising me in those same edicts.  When he threatens the most virtuous citizens with the same punishment which I inflicted on the most wicked and infamous of men, he seems to praise me as if he were desirous of copying me; but when he brings up again the memory of that most illustrious exploit, then he thinks that he is exciting some odium against me in the breasts of men like himself.