[147]
You know that the man has nothing, dares do nothing, has no
power, has never harboured a thought against your estate; and yet you attack him whom
you cannot fear, and ought not to hate; and when you see he has nothing left which you
can take away from him—unless you are indignant at this, that you see him
sitting with his clothes on in this court whom you turned naked out of his patrimony, as
if off a wreck; as if you did not know that be is both fed and clothed by Caecilia, the
daughter of Balearicus, 1 the sister of Nepos, a most incomparable
woman, who, though she had a most illustrious father, most honourable uncles, a most
accomplished brother, yet, though she was a woman, carried her virtue so far, as to
confer on them no less honour by her character than she herself received from their
dignity.
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1 In the tenth chapter she is called the daughter of Metellus Nepos; so, if the reading there be correct, it must be corrupt here, which is probably the case. According to Graevius, she was a woman held in such esteem that, in the Marsic war, the temple of Juno Sospita was restored by a decree of the senate in compliance with a dream seen by her, as Cicero records in the treatise De Divinatione.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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