onishment of all was, that you should
venture to make mention of inheritances, when you yourself had not
received the inheritance of your own father.

XVII. And was it in order to collect all these arguments, O you
most senseless of men, that you spent so many days in practising
declamation in another man's villa? Although, indeed, (as your most
intimate friends usually say,) you are in the habit of declaiming,
not for the purpose of whetting your genius, but of working off the
effects of wine. And, indeed, you employ a master to teach you jokes,
a man appointed by your own vote and that of your boon companions; a
rhetorician, whom you have allowed to say what ever he pleased against
you, a thoroughly facetious gentleman; but there are plenty of
materials for speaking against you and against your friends. But just
see now what a difference there is between you and your grandfather.
He used with great deliberation to bring forth arguments advantageous
to the cause he was advocating; you pour forth in a hurry the
sentiments which you have been taught by another. And what wages have
you paid this rhetorician? Listen, listen, O conscript fathers,
and learn the blows which are inflicted on the republic. You have
assigned, O Antonius, two thousand acres[14] which is often translated
acre also, of land, in the Leontine district, to Sextus Clodius, the
rhetorician, and those, too, exempt from every kind of tax, for the
sake of putting the Roman people to such a vast expense that you might
learn to be a fool. Was this gift, too, O you most audacious of men,
found among Caesar's papers? But I will take another opportunity to
speak about the Leontine and the Campanian district; where he has
stolen lands from the republic to pollute them with most infamous
owners. For now, since I have sufficiently replied to all his charges,
I must say a little about our corrector and censor himself. And yet I
will not say all I could, in order that if I have often to battle
with him I may always come to the contest with fresh arms; and the
multitude of his vices and atrocities will easily enable me to do so.

XVIII. Shall we then examine your conduct from the time when you were
a boy? I think so. Let us begin at the beginning. Do you recollect
that, while you were still clad in the praetexta, you became a
bankrupt? That was the fault of your father, you will say. I admit
that. In truth, such a defence is full of filial affection. But it
is pecu