Chapter V: SEXTUS CLODIUS, a native of Sicily, a professor both of Greek and

Latin eloquence, had bad eyes and a facetious tongue. It was a saying of his, that he lost a pair of eyes from his intimacy with Mark Antony, the triumvir [916]. Of his wife, Fulvia, when there was a swelling in one of her cheeks, he said that “she tempted the point of his style;” [917] nor did Antony think any the worse of him for the joke, but quite enjoyed it; and soon afterwards, when Antony was consul [918], he even made him a large grant of land, which Cicero charges him with in his Philippics [919]. “You patronize,” he said, “a master of the schools for the sake of his buffoonery, and make a rhetorician one of your pot-companions; allowing him to cut his jokes on any one he pleased; a witty man, no doubt, but it was an easy matter to say smart things of such as you and your companions. But listen, Conscript Fathers, while I tell you what reward was given to this rhetorician, and let the wounds of the republic be laid bare to view. You assigned two thousand acres of the Leontine territory [920] to Sextus Clodius, the rhetorician, and not content with that, exonerated the estate from all taxes. Hear this, and learn from the extravagance of the grant, how little wisdom is displayed in your acts.”