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9“A proof of all this is that you have never accomplished any achievement worthy of a distinguished man either in war or in peace. What wars, for instance, did we win when you were praetor, or what territory did we acquire when you were consul? Nay, but you are continually deceiving some of the foremost men and winning them to your side, and then you privately use them as agents to carry out your policies and to pass what measures you choose, 2while publicly you indulge in vain rantings, bawling out those detestable phrases, ‘I am the only one who loves you,’ or, perchance, ‘I and so-and -so; but all the rest hate you,’ or ‘I alone am your friend, but all the rest are plotting against you,’ and other such stuff by which you fill some with elation and conceit and then betray them, and frighten the rest and thus bring them to your side. 3And if any service is rendered by any one in the world, you lay claim to it and attach your own name to it, prating: ‘I moved it, I proposed it, all this was done as it was through me.’ But if anything turns out unfortunately, you clear your own skirts of it and lay the blame on all the rest, saying: ‘Look you, was I the praetor, 4or the envoy, or the consul? ‘And you abuse everybody everywhere all the time, setting more store by the influence which comes from appearing to speak your mind boldly than by saying what duty demands; but as to the function of an orator, you exemplify it in no respect worth speaking of.
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