1I return now to you, Caelius, in my turn, and I take upon myself a father's authority and strictness. 1But I am unsure which father I should best adopt — some fierce and harsh one from Caecilius: 'Now at last my mind is ablaze, now my heart is heaped with anger', or that one: 'O wretched boy, O wicked boy!' 1Iron-hearted are those fathers: 'What am I to say, what am I to wish? 1all of which wishes you, by your foul deeds, make me wish in vain' — they are scarcely to be borne. 1Such a father would say: 'Why did you betake yourself into that neighbourhood of harlots?
1why, once you had recognised its allurements, did you not flee from them?' 1'Why have you come to know any woman who belongs to another? 1Scatter and squander; 1you may, for all I care. 1If you are in want, it will hurt you, not me. 1It is enough for me to have the means to delight what remains of my life.' 1To this gloomy and strait-laced old man Caelius would answer that he had not strayed from the path through being led on by any passion. 38What sign of it is there? 38No expenses, no losses, no borrowing to pay off debts. 38But there was talk. 38How few can escape that, especially in so slanderous a city?
38Are you surprised that the neighbour of that woman got a bad name, when her own brother could not escape the gossip of malicious people? 38But with a gentle and indulgent father, of the sort who says: 'He has broken down the doors? They will be repaired; 38he has torn the clothing? It will be mended', Caelius' case is very easily made. 38For what is there on which he could not easily defend himself? 38I say nothing now against that woman; 38but if there were some woman, unlike her, who made herself common to all, who always had some lover openly marked out, into whose gardens, house and Baiae the lusts of all men freely came and went as of right, who even kept young men and supported the stinginess of their fathers at her own expense; 38if she lived freely as a widow, shamelessly as a wanton, extravagantly as a rich woman, and in the manner of a harlot as a lustful one, should I think a man an adulterer if he had greeted her a little too freely?