[78]
For a man who has ventured on such a
step as that of prosecuting a man of consular rank because he says that the
republic has been injured by his violence, cannot possibly behave as a
turbulent citizen in the republic himself: a man who will not allow another
to be at peace, even after he his been acquitted of bribery and corruption,
can never himself become a briber of others with impunity.
The republic, O judges, has two prosecutions, which have been carried on by
Marcus Caelius, as pledges to secure it from any danger from him and
guarantees of his good-will and devotion. Wherefore I do pray and entreat
you, O judges, after Sextus Clodius has been acquitted within these few days
in this very city;—a man whom you have seen for the last two years
acting on all occasions as the minister or leader of sedition;—a
man who has burnt sacred temples and even the census of the Roman people and
all the public records and registers1 with his own hands;—a man
without property, without honesty, without hope, without a home, without any
character or position, polluted in face, and tongue, and hand, and in every
particular of his life;—a man who has degraded the monument of
Catulus, who has pulled down my house, and burnt that belonging to my
brother;—who on the Palatine
Hill, and in the sight of all the city, stirred up the
slaves to massacre and to the conflagration of the city;—I entreat
you, I say, not to suffer that man to have been acquitted in this city by
the influence of a woman, and at the same time to allow Marcus Caelius to be
sacrificed, in the same city, to a woman's lusts. I entreat you never to
permit the same woman, in conjunction with a man who is at the same time her
brother and her husband, to save a most infamous robber, and
to overwhelm a most honourable and virtuous young man.
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1 This refers to Clodius having set on fire the temple of the Nymphs, where the registers of the censors were kept.
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