think their suspicions well
grounded. You took him from us a mere boy and straightway gave him the
garb of manhood. While he was under our guardianship, he used to go to
school: now he has bidden a long farewell to study and betaken himself
to the delights of the tavern. He despises serious friends, and, boy
as he is, spends his tender years in revelling with the most abandoned
youths among harlots and wine-cups. He rules your house, orders your
slaves, directs your banquets. He is a frequent visitor to the
gladiatorial school and there--as a boy of position should!--he learns
from the keeper of the school the names of the gladiators, the fights
they have fought, the wounds they have received. He never speaks any
language save Punic, and though he may occasionally use a Greek word
picked up from his mother, he neither will nor can speak Latin. You
heard, Maximus, a little while ago, you heard my step-son--oh! the
shame of it!--the brother of that eloquent young fellow Pontianus,
hardly able to stammer out single syllables, when you asked him
whether his mother had given himself and his brother the gifts which,
as I told you just now, she actually gave them with my hearty support.

99. I call you, therefore, Claudius Maximus, and you, gentlemen, his
assessors, and you that with me stand before this tribunal, to bear
witness that this boy's disgraceful falling away in morals is due to
his uncle here and that candidate for the privilege of becoming his
father-in-law, and that I shall henceforth count it a blessing that
such a step-son has lifted the burden of superintending him from my
shoulders, and that from this day forth I will never intercede for him
with his mother. For recently--I had almost forgotten to mention
it--when Pudentilla, who had fallen ill after the death of her son
Pontianus, was writing her will, I had a prolonged struggle to prevent
her disinheriting this boy on account of the outrageous insult and
injury he had inflicted on her. I prayed her with the utmost
earnestness to erase that most important clause, which, I can assure
you, she had already written, every word of it! Finally, I even
threatened to leave her, if she refused to accede to my request, and
begged her to grant me this boon, to conquer her wicked son by
kindness, and to save me from all the ill feeling which her action
would create. I did not desist till she complied. I regret that I
should have smoothed Aemilianus' way for him and sho