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14“ ‘But he made an improper use of his position as master of the horse.’ Why? ‘Because,’ he answers, ‘he bought Pompey’s possessions.’ But how many others are there who purchased countless articles, no one of whom is blamed! Why, that was the purpose, naturally, in confiscating goods and putting them up at auction and proclaiming them by the voice of the public crier, namely, that somebody should buy them. 2‘But Pompey’s goods ought not to have been sold.’ Then it was we who erred and did wrong in confiscating them; or—to clear us both of blame—it was Caesar anyhow, I suppose, who acted irregularly, since he ordered this to be done; yet you did not censure him at all. 3But in making this charge Cicero stands convicted of playing the utter fool. In any event he has brought against Antony two utterly contradictory charges—first, that after helping Caesar in very many ways and receiving in return vast gifts from him, he was then required under compulsion to surrender the price of them, 4and, second, that, although he inherited naught from his father and swallowed up all that he had acquired ‘like Charybdis’ (the speaker is always offering us some comparison from Sicily, as if we had forgotten that he had gone into exile there), he nevertheless paid the price of all he had purchased.
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