1You possess my estates, I live on the pity of others; 1I accept it, both because my mind is content and because I must. 1My house is open to you, closed to me; 1I bear it. 1You use my very large household of slaves, I have not a single slave; 1I endure it and think it must be borne. 1What more do you want? 1why do you pursue me, why do you attack me? 1in what matter do you think your wishes are injured by me? 1where do I stand in the way of your advantage? 1how do I obstruct you? 1If you want to kill the man for the sake of spoils, you have despoiled him; 1what more do you seek?
1if for the sake of enmity, what enmity have you with a man whose estates you possessed before you knew the man himself? 1if from fear, do you fear anything from a man who, as you see, cannot even ward off so atrocious a wrong from himself? 1but if it is because the goods which were Roscius' have become yours that you are eager to destroy this man, his son, are you not showing that you fear what you, beyond all others, ought not to fear: that one day their fathers' goods may be restored to the children of the proscribed? 146You do wrong, Chrysogonus, if you place greater hope for your purchase in this man's destruction than in the acts which Lucius Sulla carried out.
146But if you have no reason for wishing this wretched man to be struck by so great a calamity, if he has handed over to you everything of his except his life and has kept back for himself nothing of his father's, not even as a keepsake, by the immortal gods! 146what is this enormous cruelty, what nature so savage and monstrous? 146What robber was ever so wicked, what pirate so barbarous, that, when he could have the whole of his plunder without bloodshed, he would rather strip off spoils dripping with blood? 147You know that this man has nothing, dares nothing, can do nothing, has never plotted anything against your interests, and yet you attack one whom you cannot fear, ought not to hate, and who, you see, has nothing left that you could take from him.
147Unless you think it an outrage that you see sitting in court fully clothed the man whom you threw out of his inheritance naked, as though from a shipwreck. 147As if indeed you did not know that he is both fed and clothed by Caecilia, daughter of Balearicus and sister of Nepos, a most highly respected woman, who, though she had a most distinguished father, very eminent uncles and a most accomplished brother, still, woman though she was, achieved by her virtue that, however great the honour she herself received from their rank, she returned to them distinctions no less great from her own merit.