[35]
What? why
should all the sacred rites of the Clodian family perish, as far as it
depends on you? And that must have been the idea of all the priests when you
were adopted. Unless, perchance, the question was put to you in this
way,—whether you were intending to disturb the republic by
seditions, and whether you wished to be adopted with that object, not in
order to become that man's son, but only in order to be made a tribune of
the people, and by that means utterly to overthrow the state? You answered,
I presume, that your object was only to be made a tribune. That appeared to
the priests to be a sufficient reason. They approved of it. No questions
were asked about the age of the man who was adopting you; as was done in the
case of Cnaeus Aufidius and Marcus Pupius, each of whom, within our
recollection, when extremely old, adopted as sons, the one Orestes, and the
other Piso. And these adoptions, like others, more than I can count, were
followed by the inheritance of the name and property and sacred
rites of the family. You are not Fonteius, as you ought to be, nor the heir
of your new father; nor, though you have lost your right to the sacred
ceremonies of your own family, have you availed yourself of those which
belong to you by adoption. And so, having thrown the ceremonies of religion
into confusion,—having polluted both families, both the one which
you have abandoned and the one which you have entered,—having
violated the legitimate practices of the Romans with respect to
guardianships and inheritances, you have been made, contrary to all the
requirements of religion, the son of that man of whom you were old enough to
be the father.
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