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26Would you suppose that he is speaking of Censorinus, or of Ventidius, or of the Antonii themselves. But why should they be unwilling that those men should become powerful, who are not only most excellent and nobly born men, but who are also united with them in the defence of the republic?
“In fact, you look upon the existing circumstances as you did on the former ones.”
What can he mean?
“You used to call the camp of Pompeius the senate.”
XII. Should we rather call your camp the senate? In which you are the only man of consular rank, you whose whole consulship is effaced from every monument and register; and two prætors, who are afraid that they will lose something by us,—a groundless fear. For we are maintaining all the grants made by Cæsar; and men of prætorian rank, Philadelphus Annius, and that innocent Gallius; and men of ædilitian rank, he on whom I have spent so much of my lungs and voice, Bestia, and that patron of good faith and cheater of his creditors, Trebellius, and that bankrupt and ruined man Quintus Cælius, and that support of the friends of Antonius Cotyla Varius, whom Antonius for his amusement caused at a banquet to be flogged with thongs by the public slaves. Men of septemviral rank, Lento and Nucula, and then that delight and darling of the Roman people, Lucius Antonius. And for tribunes, first of all two tribunes elect, Tullus Hostilius, who was so full of his privileges as to write up his name on the gate of Rome; and who, when he found himself unable to betray his general, deserted him. The other tribune elect is a man of the name of Viseius; I know nothing about him; but I hear that he is (as they say) a bold robber; who, however, they say was once a bathing man at Pisaurum, and a very good hand at mixing the water.
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