ey are, when you dare to speak so shamelessly before such
men! For what Roman knight was there, what youth of noble birth except
you, what man of any rank or class who recollected that he was a
citizen, who was not on the Capitoline Hill while the senate was
assembled in this temple? who was there, who did not give in his name?
Although there could not be provided checks enough, nor were the books
able to contain their names.

In truth, when wicked men, being compelled by the revelations of the
accomplices, by their own handwriting, and by what I may almost call
the voices of their letters, were confessing that they had planned the
parricidal destruction of their country, and that they had agreed
to burn the city, to massacre the citizens, to devastate Italy, to
destroy the republic; who could have existed without being roused to
defend the common safety? especially when the senate and people of
Rome had a leader then; and if they had one now like he was then, the
same fate would befall you which did overtake them.

He asserts that the body of his stepfather was not allowed burial by
me. But this is an assertion that was never made by Publius Clodius,
a man whom, as I was deservedly an enemy of his, I grieve now to see
surpassed by you in every sort of vice. But how could it occur to you
to recal to our recollection that you had been educated in the house
of Publius Lentulus? Were you afraid that we might think that you
could have turned out as infamous as you are by the mere force of
nature, if your natural qualities had not been strengthened by
education?

VIII. But you are so senseless that throughout the whole of your
speech you were at variance with yourself; so that you said things
which had not only no coherence with each other but which were most
inconsistent with and contradictory to one another; so that there was
not so much opposition between you and me as there was between you and
yourself. You confessed that your stepfather had been duplicated
in that enormous wickedness, yet you complained that he had had
punishment inflicted on him. And by doing so you praised what was
peculiarly my achievement, and blamed that which was wholly the act of
the senate. For the detection and arrest of the guilty parties was my
work, their punishment was the work of the senate. But that eloquent
man does not perceive that the man against whom he is speaking is
being praised by him, and that those before whom he is speaking