Cicero

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.

Again, when a certain young man who was accused of having given his father poison in a cake put on bold airs and threatened to cover Cicero with abuse, That, said Cicero, I would rather have from you than a cake. There was Publius Sextius, too, who retained Cicero as an advocate in a case, along with others, and then wanted to do all the speaking himself, and would allow no one else a word; when it was clear that he was going to be acquitted by the jurors and the vote was already being given, Use your opportunity today, Sextius, said Cicero, for to-morrow you are going to be a nobody.