Cicero

When Crassus was about to set out for Syria, wishing that Cicero should be a friend rather than an enemy, he said to him in a friendly manner that he wished to dine with him; and Cicero readily received him into his house. But a few days afterwards, when some friends interceded with him for Vatinius, saying that the man sought reconciliation and friendship (for he was an enemy), It surely cannot be, said Cicero, that Vatinius also wishes to dine with me. Such, then, was his treatment of Crassus.

Now, Vatinius himself had swellings on his neck, and once when he was pleading a case Cicero called him a tumid orator. Again, after hearing that Vatinius was dead, and then after a little learning for a surety that he was alive, Wretchedly perish, then, said Cicero, the wretch who lied!

And again, Caesar once got a decree passed that the land in Campania should be divided among his soldiers, and many of the senators were dissatisfied, and Lucius Gellius, who was about the oldest of them, declared that it should never be done while he was alive; whereupon Cicero said: Let us wait, since Gellius does not ask for a long postponement.

There was a certain Octavius, too, who was reputed to be of African descent; to this man, who said at a certain trial that he could not hear Cicero, the orator replied: And yet your ear is not without a perforation.[*](Usually the mark of a slave.) And when Metellus Nepos declared that Cicero had brought more men to death as a hostile witness than he had saved from it as an advocate, Yes, said Cicero, I admit that my credibility is greater than my eloquence.