[18]
The one reeking with perfume, with curled hair looking with disdain on the
agents of his debaucheries and the old plagues of his youthful age, formerly
when tossed and driven about by the troops1 of usurers lest in that Scyllaean state
of debt he should be dashed up against the Maenian2
column, fled into the harbour of the tribuneship. He despised the Roman
knights, he threatened the senate, he sold himself to the artisans, and
proclaimed openly that they had saved him from being prosecuted for bribery;
and he was used to say, moreover, that he hoped to obtain a province from
them, even though it were against the will of the senate; and if he did not
get a province, he did not think it possible for him to remain in safety.
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1 The text here is very corrupt. The Latin is “puteali et foeneratorum gregibus inflatus atque perculsus”. The puteal was the puteal Libonis, mentioned in Horace, the enclosure surrounding a well erected by Scribonius Libo to preserve the memory of a chapel which had been struck by lightning, and it was a common place of meeting for usurers.
2 See vol. i. p. 123, note.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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