man's character,
using such moderation as I may, lest, if I pass him by in silence, the
energy which he has shown in engineering this accusation against me
should have been spent all in vain.

This is the man who poisoned that worthless boy against me, who is the
prime mover in this accusation, who has hired advocates and bought
witnesses. This is the furnace in which all this calumny has been
forged, this the firebrand, this the scourge that has driven
Aemilianus here to his task. He makes it his boast before all men in
the most extravagant language that it is through his machinations that
my indictment has been procured. In truth he has some reason for
self-congratulation. For he is the organizer of every lawsuit, the
deviser of every perjury, the architect of every lie, the seed-ground
of every wickedness, the vile haunt and hideous habitation of lust and
gluttony, the mark of every scandal since his earliest years: in
boyhood, ere he became so hideously bald, the ready servant of the
vilest vices; in youth a stage dancer limp and nerveless enough in all
conscience, but, they tell me, clumsy and inartistic in his very
effeminacy. Except for his immodesty he is said not to have possessed
a single quality that should distinguish an actor.

75. He is older now--God's curse upon him! I crave your pardon for my
warmth of language. But his house is the dwelling-place of panders,
his whole household foul with sin, himself a man of infamous
character, his wife a harlot, his sons like their parents. His door
night and day is battered with the kicks of wanton gallants, his
windows loud with the sound of loose serenades, his dining-room wild
with revel, his bedchambers the haunt of adulterers. For no one need
fear to enter it save he who has no gift for the husband. Thus does he
make an income from his own dishonour. What else should the wretch do?
He has lost a considerable fortune, though I admit that he only got
that fortune unexpectedly through a fraudulent transaction on the part
of his father. The latter, having borrowed money from a number of
persons, preferred to keep their money at the cost of his own good
name. Bills poured in on every side with demands for payment. Every
one that met him laid hands on him as though he were a madman.
'Steady, now!' says he, 'I can't find the cash.' So he resigned his
golden rings and all the badges of his position in society and thus
came to terms with his creditors. But he had by