[34]
But afterwards, when he had become hardened by a long course of such
infamy,—when he had sated others, not himself,—why need I relate
what sort of man he turned out? what carefully guarded defences of modesty and
chastity he broke down by violence and audacity? or why should I connect the
disgrace of an, one else with his profligacy? I will not do so, O judges. I will
pass over all old stories; I will only mention two recent achievements of his,
without fixing infamy on any one else; and by those you will be able to conjecture
the rest. One of them is, that it was so notorious to every one, that during the
consulship of Lucius Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, no one ever came up from any
municipal town to Rome on any law
business, who was so ill-informed of what was going on as not to know that all the
laws of the Roman people were regulated by the will and pleasure of Chelidon the
prostitute. The other is that, after he had left the city in the robe of
war,—after he had pronounced the solemn vows for the success of his
administration, and for the common welfare of the republic, he was accustomed, for
the sake of committing adultery, to be brought back into the city, at night, in a
litter, to a woman who, though the wife of one man, was common to all men, contrary
to law, contrary to what was required by the auspices, contrary to everything which
is held sacred among gods and men.
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