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18He asserts that the body of his stepfather was not allowed burial by me. But this is an assertion that was never made by Publius Clodius, a man whom, as I was deservedly an enemy of his, I grieve now to see surpassed by you in every sort of vice. But how could it occur to you to recal to our recollection that you had been educated in the house of Publius Lentulus? Were you afraid that we might think that you could have turned out as infamous as you are by the mere force of nature, if your natural qualities had not been strengthened by education?
VIII. But you are so senseless that throughout the whole of your speech you were at variance with yourself; so that you said things which had not only no coherence with each other, but which were most inconsistent with and contradictory to one another; so that there was not so much opposition between you and me as there was between you and yourself. You confessed that your stepfather had been implicated in that enormous wickedness, yet you complained that he had had punishment inflicted on him. And by doing so you praised what was peculiarly my achievement, and blamed that which was wholly the act of the senate. For the detection and arrest of the guilty parties was my work, their punishment was the work of the senate. But that eloquent man does not perceive that the man against whom he is speaking is being praised by him, and that those before whom he is speaking are being attacked by him.
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