[41]
Oh, you sold
the tenths for more than others had sold them. By what means did you manage that? by
innocent means? Look at the temple of Castor, and then, if you dare, talk of your
innocent means. By your diligence? Look at the erasures in your registers at the
name of Sthenius of Thermae, and then have the face to call yourself diligent. By
your ability? You who refused at the former pleadings to put questions to the
witnesses, and preferred presenting yourself dumb before them, pray call yourself
and your advocates able men as much as you please. By what means, then, did you
manage what you say you did? For it is a great credit to you if you have surpassed
your predecessors in ability, and left to your successors your example and your
authority. Perhaps you had no one before you fit to imitate. But, no doubt, all men
will imitate you, the investor and first parent of such excellent methods.
This text is part of:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.