1Preserve for the state, then, judges, a citizen devoted to good arts, to the good party, and to good men. 1I promise you this and pledge it to the state, provided only that I myself have done my duty to the state, that this man will never be separated from my policies. 1I promise this both because I rely on our friendship and because he has already bound himself by the strictest of laws. 78For a man who has summoned a consular to trial, alleging that the state was violated by him, cannot himself be a turbulent citizen in the state; 78a man who will not allow even one acquitted of bribery to be acquitted cannot himself ever be a briber with impunity.
78The state has from Marcus Caelius, judges, two prosecutions, either as hostages against danger or as pledges of his goodwill. 78Therefore I beg and implore you, judges, that in a state in which, within these last few days, Sextus Clodius was acquitted, whom for two years you have seen as either the agent or the leader of sedition, a man without property, without credit, without hope, without home, without fortune, polluted in mouth, tongue, hand and his whole life, who with his own hands set fire to sacred buildings, to the census of the Roman people, to the public records, who wrecked the monument of Catulus, demolished my house and set fire to my brother's, who on the Palatine and before the eyes of the city stirred up slaves to massacre and to setting the city ablaze: in that state, do not allow that man to have been acquitted through a woman's favour and Marcus Caelius to be sacrificed to a woman's lust, lest the same woman, with her husband and brother, seem both to have rescued a most foul brigand and to have crushed a most honourable young man.
79And when you have set before yourselves this young man's youth, place before your eyes also the old age of this unhappy man here, who leans on this only son, rests in his hope, dreads the fall of him alone; 79him, a suppliant of your mercy, a slave to your power, cast down not so much at your feet as before your character and feelings, sustain him, either by the memory of your parents or by the delight you take in your children, so that in another's grief you may indulge either your filial devotion or your fatherly tenderness. 79Do not, judges, wish either that this man, already setting by nature herself, should be extinguished sooner by a wound from you than by his own fate, or that this young man, now for the first time flowering, with the stem of virtue already strengthened, should be overturned as if by some whirlwind or sudden storm.
80Preserve the son for the father, the father for the son, lest you seem either to have scorned an old age now almost past hope, or not only to have failed to nurture a youth full of the highest hope but even to have struck it down and crushed it. 80If you preserve him for me, for his family, for the state, you will have him bound, devoted and obligated to you and your children, and you above all, judges, will reap rich and lasting fruits of all his energies and labours.