[20]
But let us see whom he has
cheated. Roscius has cheated Caius Fannius Chaerea. I beg and entreat you, who know them
both, compare the lives of the two men together; you who do not know them, compare the
countenance of both. Does not his very head, and those eye-brows entirely shaved off,
seem to smell of wickedness, and to proclaim cunning? Does he not from his toe-nails to
his head, if the voiceless figure of a man's person can enable men to conjecture his
character, seem wholly made up of fraud, and cheating, and lies? He who has his head and
eyebrows always shaved that he may not be said to have one hair of an honest man about
him. And Roscius has been accustomed to represent his figure admirably on the stage, and
yet he does no meet with the gratitude due to such kindness. For when he acts Ballio,
that most worthless and perjured pimp, he represents Chaerea. That foul, and impure, and
detestable character is represented in this man's manners, and nature, and life. And why
he should have thought Roscius like himself in dishonesty and wickedness, I do not know;
unless, perhaps, because he observed that he imitated himself admirably in the character
of the pimp.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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