You now, then have an answer to the question which you put to me—who were the best men? They are not a race, as you termed them, an expression which I recognised at once, for it was one invented by that man by whom above all others, Publius Sestius sees himself opposed,—by that man who has wished the whole of this race of Romans destroyed and slaughtered,—who has constantly reproached and constantly attacked Caius Caesar, a very mild-tempered man and very averse to bloodshed, asserting that he, as long as that race lived, would never be free from anxiety. He gained nothing by his attacks on the whole body, but he never ceased to urge the point against me. He attacked me first of all by the instrumentality of the informer Vettius, to whom he put questions in the assembly, concerning me, and concerning the most illustrious men in the state. But while doing this, he joined those citizens in the same danger with me, bringing forward the same accusations against them, so as to deserve great gratitude from me for connecting me with the most honourable and bravest of men. [cap.64] [133]
But afterwards he in a most wicked manner contrived all sorts of plots against me, for no provocation which I had given him, except inasmuch as I was anxious to please all virtuous men. He was every day mentioning some fault of mine to those men whom he could get to listen to him; he warned the man who was of all others the most friendly to me, Cnaeus Pompeius, to beware of entering my house, and to be on his guard against me; he united himself with my chief enemy, in such a manner that he said, with respect to that proscription of mine which Sextus Clodius, a fellow thoroughly worthy of his associates, promoted, that he was the tablet on which it was written, and that he himself was the writer. And he alone of our whole order openly exulted at my departure and at your grief. And I, for my part, O judges, though he was every day attacking me, never said one word against him; nor did I think, while I was being attacked by every sort of engine and weapon of violence, and an army, and a mob, that it was suited to my dignity to complain of one archer more.