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

Nor, O judges, am I at all moved by the accusation respecting Clodius. Nor am I so insane, and so ignorant of, and inexperienced in, your feelings, as not to be aware what your opinions are about the death of Clodius, concerning which, if I were unwilling to do away with the accusation in the manner in which I have done away with it, still I assert that it would have been lawful for Milo to proclaim openly, with a false but glorious boast. “I have slain, I have slain, not Spurius Maelius, who fell under the suspicion of aiming at kingly power by lowering the price of corn, and by squandering his own family estate, because by that conduct he was thought to be paying too much court to the common people; not Tiberius Gracchus, who, out of a seditious spirit abrogated the magistracy of his own colleague; whose slayers have filled the whole world with the renown of their name; but him” (for he would venture to name him when he had delivered his country at his own risk) “who was detected in the most infamous adultery in the most sacred shrine, by most noble women; [73] him, by the execution of whom the senate has repeatedly resolved that solemn religious observances required to be propitiated; him whom Lucius Lucullus, when he was examined on the point, declared on his oath that he had detected in committing unhallowed incest with his own sister; him, who by means of armed bands of slaves drove from his country that citizen whom the senate, whom the Roman people, whom all nations had declared to be the saviour of the city and of the lives of all the citizens; him, who gave kingdoms, took them away, and distributed the whole world to whomsoever he pleased; him who, after having committed numberless murders in the forum, drove a citizen of the most extraordinary virtue and glory to his own house by violence and by arms; him, to whom nothing was ever too impious to be done, whether it was a deed of atrocity or of lust; him, who burnt the temple of the nymphs, in order to extinguish the public record of the census which was committed to the public registers; [74] lastly, him who acknowledged no law, no civil rights, no boundaries to any man's possessions,—who sought to obtain other people's estates, not by actions at law and false accusations, not by unjust claims and false oaths, but by camps, by an army, by regular standards and all the pomp of war,—who, by means of arms and soldiers, endeavoured to drive from their possessions, not only the Etrurians, for he thoroughly despised them, but even this Publius Varius, that most gallant man and most virtuous citizen, one of our judges,—who went into many other people's villas and grounds with architects and surveyors, who limited his hopes of acquiring possessions by Janiculum and the Alps; him who, when he was unable to prevail on an estimable and gallant Roman knight, Marcus Paconius, to sell him his villa on the Prelian Lake, suddenly conveyed timber, and lime, and mortar, and tools in boats to the island, and while the owner of the island was looking at him from the opposite bank, did not hesitate to build a house on another man's land; who said to Titus Furfanius—O ye immortal gods, what a man! [75] (for why should I mention that insignificant woman, Scantia, or that youth Aponius, both of whom he threatened with death if they did not abandon to him the possession of their villas?) but he dared to say to Furfanius, that if he did not give him as much money as he demanded, he would carry a dead body into his house, and so raise a storm of unpopularity against him; who turned his brother Appius, a man connected with me by the most faithful friendship, while he was absent out of the possession of his farm; who determined to run a wall across the vestibule of his sister's house in such a manner, and to draw the line of foundation in such a direction, as not only to deprive his sister of her vestibule, but of all access to her house, and of her own threshold.”