M. Tullius Cicero, For Sestius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

We saw the course of his life his indolence and sloth; those who were in the least acquainted with him saw his secret licentiousness. Moreover, he gave us, by his conversation, plenty of handles to enable us to grasp and comprehend his inmost feelings. [23] Being a very learned man, he used to praise philosophers,—I don't know which, and indeed he could not tell their names himself;—but still he used to praise those above all others who were said to be beyond all the rest the admirers and panegyrists of pleasures: of what sort of pleasure,—of pleasure enjoyed at what times and in what manner he never inquired but the name itself he devoured with all the energy of his mind and body. And he used to say that those same philosophers were right when they said that wise men do everything for the sake of themselves, that no man in his senses has any business to trouble himself about the government of the republic; that nothing is better than a life of ease, full of, and loaded with, all sorts of pleasures and he used to say that those men who said that men ought to regard their own dignity, and to consult the interests of the republic, and to have a regard in every action of life to duty and not to advantage, that men ought to undergo dangers on behalf of their country, and to encounter wounds and to seek even death for its sake, were crazy and mad. [24] And from these incessant and daily conversations of his, and because I saw who the men were with whom he lived in the more retired part of his house, and because his house itself (as I may say) smoked so as to emit a steam from his discourse, and to show what he was about, I made up my mind that nothing good was to be looked for from such a trifler; but at the same time certainly that no evil need be feared. But the fact is, O judges, that, if you give a sword to a little child, or to a powerless and decrepit old man, he himself by his own violence cannot injure any one, but still if the sword touches the naked body of even the strongest man, it is possible that he may be wounded by the mere sharpness and power of the weapon; in like manner, when the consulship had been given as a sword to enervated and worn-out men, who, of their own strength, would never be able to wound any one, they, armed with the name of supreme command, murdered the republic. They openly made a treaty with the tribune of the people, to receive from him whatever provinces they chose, and an army, and as much money as they chose, on this condition,—that they themselves were the first to hand over the afflicted republic in fetters to the tribune. And they thought that that treaty could be ratified in my blood. [25] And when this matter was divulged, (for such enormous wickedness could not be dissembled or hidden for any length of time,) motions are proposed at one and the same time by the same tribune, concerning my destruction and concerning the provinces of the consuls, allotting them to each of them by name.