1Nor, judges, does the charge about Clodius trouble me, nor am I so mad and so ignorant and devoid of your feelings that I do not know what you feel about Clodius' death. 1Even if I did not now wish to refute the charge concerning it as I have refuted it, Milo would still be permitted to cry out openly and with impunity, and to lie boastfully: 'I have killed, I have killed, not a Spurius Maelius, who by lowering the price of grain and spending his own property fell under suspicion of aiming at kingship because he seemed to court the common people too much, not a Tiberius Gracchus, who through sedition deprived his colleague of his office — men whose killers have filled the world with the glory of their name — but the man (for he would dare to say it, since he had freed his country at his own risk) whose abominable adultery on the most sacred couches of the gods was detected by women of the highest rank; 1the man by whose punishment the senate often decreed that the solemn rites should be expiated; 73the man whom Lucius Lucullus declared on oath he had found, through examinations held, to have committed abominable incest with his own sister; 73the man who, with the arms of slaves, drove out a citizen whom the senate, whom the Roman people, whom all nations had judged the preserver of the city and of the lives of its citizens; 73the man who gave kingdoms and took them away, and shared out the world with whomever he wished; 73the man who, after many murders had been committed in the forum, drove a citizen of singular courage and glory into his house by violence and arms; 73the man for whom nothing was ever forbidden, either in crime or in lust; 73the man who set fire to the temple of the Nymphs to destroy the public record of the census entered in the public registers; 73the man, finally, for whom there was no longer any law, any civil right, any boundaries of property, who sought other people's estates not by vexatious lawsuits, not by unjust claims and legal wagers, but with camps, an army and advancing standards; 74who tried to drive from their properties with arms and camps not only the Etruscans — for he utterly despised them — but even Publius Varius here, a most courageous and excellent citizen, one of our judges; who roamed over many people's villas and gardens with architects and measuring rods; who had set the Janiculum and the Alps as the bounds of his hopes of possession; who, when he had failed to persuade Marcus Paconius, a distinguished and brave Roman knight, to sell him an island in Lake Prilius, suddenly carried timber, lime, rubble and sand to that island in boats, and, while the owner looked on from across the bank, did not hesitate to put up a building on another man's property; 74who to Titus Furfanius here — and what a man, immortal gods! — for why should I speak of the poor woman Scantia, or of the young Publius Aponius?
75both of whom he threatened with death unless they gave up possession of their gardens to him —; 75but who dared to tell Titus Furfanius that if he did not give him as much money as he demanded, he would carry a corpse into his house, so that such a man would have to be consumed by the odium of it; 75who drove his brother Appius, a man bound to me by the most faithful friendship, from possession of his estate while he was away; 75who began to build a wall through his sister's forecourt, and to lay its foundations in such a way as to deprive his sister not only of her forecourt but of every approach and threshold.'