[17]
Although I now thought, O judges, that it had been brought about by my labours, that a want
of nobleness of birth should not be objected to many brave men, who were neglected, though men
were praising not only the Curii, the Catos, the Pompeii, those ancient new but most
distinguished men, but also, these more modern new men, the Marii, and Didii, and Coelii. But
when I, after so great an interval, had broken down those barriers of nobility, so that
entrance to the consulship should hereafter be opened, as it was in the time of I our
ancestors, not more to high birth than to virtue, I did not think when a consul-elect of an
ancient and illustrious family was being defended by the son of a Roman knight himself a
consul, that the accusers would say anything about newness of family. In truth it happened to
me myself to stand against two patricians, one a most worthless and audacious man, the other a
most modest and virtuous one; yet I surpassed Catiline in worth, Galba in popularity. But if
that ought to have been imputed as a crime to a new man, forsooth, I should have wanted
neither enemies nor detractors.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.