ith respect by you, and you received
attentions from me in your canvass for the quaestorship. And it was at
that time, indeed, that you endeavoured to slay Publius Clodius in the
forum, with the approbation of the Roman people; and though you made
the attempt of your own accord, and not at my instigation, still you
clearly alleged that you did not think, unless you slew him, that you
could possibly make amends to me for all the injuries which you had
done me. And this makes me wonder why you should say that Milo did
that deed at my instigation; when I never once exhorted you to do it,
who of your own accord attempted to do me the same service. Although,
if you had persisted in it, I should have preferred allowing the
action to be set down entirely to your own love of glory rather than
to my influence.

You were elected quaestor. On this, immediately, without any resolution
of the senate authorizing such a step, without drawing lots, without
procuring any law to be passed, you hastened to Caesar. For you thought
the camp the only refuge on earth for indigence, and debt, and
profligacy,--for all men, in short, who were in a state of utter ruin.
Then, when you had recruited your resources again by his largesses and
your own robberies, (if, indeed, a person can be said to recruit,
who only acquires something which he may immediately squander,) you
hastened, being again a beggar, to the tribuneship, in order that in
that magistracy you might, if possible, behave like your friend.

XXI. Listen now, I beseech you, O conscript fathers, not to those
things which he did indecently and profligately to his own injury and
to his own disgrace as a private individual; but to the actions which
he did impiously and wickedly against us and our fortunes,--that is to
say, against the whole republic. For it is from his wickedness that
you will find that the beginning of all these evils has arisen.

For when, in the consulship of Lucius Lentulus and Marcus Marcellus,
you, on the first of January, were anxious to prop up the republic,
which was tottering and almost falling, and were willing to consult
the interests of Caius Caesar himself, if he would have acted like
a man in his senses, then this fellow opposed to your counsels his
tribuneship, which he had sold and handed over to the purchaser, and
exposed his own neck to that axe under which many have suffered for
smaller crimes. It was against you, O Marcus Antonius, that the
senate, w