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25.
[61]
You came to Brundusium, to the
bosom and embraces of your actress. What is the matter? Am I speaking falsely?
How miserable is it not to be able to deny a fact which it is disgraceful to
confess! If you had no shame before the municipal towns, had you none even
before your veteran army? For what soldier was there who did not see her at
Brundusium? who was there
who did not know that she had come so many days' journey to congratulate you?
who was there who did not grieve that he was so late in finding out how
worthless a man he had been following?
[62]
Again you made a tour through Italy, with that same actress for your
companion. Cruel and miserable was the way in which you led your soldiers into
the towns; shameful was the pillager in every city, of gold and silver, and
above all, of wine. And besides all this, while Caesar knew nothing about it, as
he was at Alexandria, Antonius, by the
kindness of Caesar's friends, was appointed his master of the horse. Then he
thought that you could live with Hippia1 by virtue of his office, and that he might give horses which
were the property of the state to Sergius the buffoon. At that time he had
elected for himself to live in, not the house which he now dishonors, but that
of Marcus Piso. Why need I mention his decrees, his robberies, the possessions
of inheritances which were given him, and those too which were seized by him?
Want compelled him; he did not know where to turn. That great inheritance from
Lucius Rubrius, and that other from Lucius Turselius, had not yet come to him.
He had not yet succeeded as an unexpected heir to the place of Cnaeus Pompeius,
and of many others who were absent. He was forced to live like a robber, having
nothing beyond what he could plunder from others.
[63]
However, we will say nothing of these things, which are
acts of a more hardy sort of villainy. Let us speak rather of his meaner
descriptions of worthlessness. You, with those jaws of yours, and those sides of
yours, and that strength of body suited to a gladiator, drank such quantities of
wine at the marriage of Hippia, that you were forced to vomit the next day in
the sight of the Roman people. O action disgraceful not merely to see, but even
to hear of! If this had happened to you at supper amid those vast drinking-cups
of yours, who would not have thought it scandalous? But in an assembly of the
Roman people, a man holding a public office, a master of the horse, to whom it
would have been disgraceful even to belch, vomiting filled his own bosom and the
whole tribunal with fragments of what he had been eating reeking with wine. But
he himself confesses this among his other disgraceful acts. Let us proceed to
his more splendid offenses.
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