17.
But not only do children do this by the wish of their fathers, but I have myself known
many men (and so, unless I am deceived, has every one of you) who are inflamed of their
own accord with a fondness for what relates to the cultivation of land, and who think
this rural life, which you think ought to be a disgrace to and a charge against a man,
the most honourable and the most delightful.
[49]
What do
you think of this very Sextus Roscius? How great is his fondness for, and shrewdness in
rural affairs! As I hear from his relations, most honourable men, you are not more
skillful in this your business of an accuser, than he is in his. But, as I think, since
it seems good to Chrysogonus, who has left him no farm, he will be able now to forget
this skill of his, and to give up this taste. And although that is a sad and a
scandalous thing, yet he will bear it, O judges, with equanimity, if, by your verdict,
he can preserve his life and his character; but this is intolerable, if he is both to
have this calamity brought upon him on account of the goodness and number of his farms,
and if that is especially to be imputed to him as a crime that he cultivated them with
great care; so that it is not to be misery enough to have cultivated them for others not
for himself, unless it is also to be accounted a crime that he cultivated them at all.
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