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Today is a day for all Cicero all the time! (It's to make up for all the Greek I spent the morning and afternoon on.) At this point, we're nearly at the end of the speech; Cicero is wrapping up with another explanation of how great a guy Caelius is. After spending half the speech talking about how terrible Clodia is, it's important for him to end on a "...but this guy is great!" about the defendant, rather than lingering on all the scandal which was, as far as I can tell, rather connected to Caelius in the jurors' minds by default.
Chapter 72
Honestly, why was Marcus Caelius called into this court? The charge wasn’t referenced about him in a manner appropriate to this court, nor in fact anything of this type which is disconnected from the law, when it is joined with your severity. His first age was given to discipline and those arts by which we’re instructed towards this judicial use, towards what must be done for the republic, towards honor, glory, and dignity. Moreover, it was given to his older friends whose industry and self-control he most wished to emulate, and to those studies of his peers as the same course of praise which it seemed the best and most noble men sought.
Chapter 73
Moreover, when he added a little strength to his age, he was useful in Africa as an aid to the consul Q. Pompeius, a most chaste man and most diligent to all his duty; in which province his father’s business and possessions lay, and indeed a certain experience with the province was assigned to this age by his elders, not without cause. He returned from there highly esteemed in Pomepius’ judgement, as you all known by the man’s own testimony. He wanted his own industry to be known from that infamous accusation*, by the old custom and by the example of the young men who as the highest and most famous men sprang up in the state afterward.
Chapter 74
I would wish more strongly that the desire for glory had carried him elsewhere; but the time for this complaint has departed. He accused C. Antonius, my colleague, to which unhappy famous kindness nothing in the republic profits by memory, and to which intentional malice an opinion harms.** Afterwards he never conceded to anyone of his peers to be more involved in the businesses and cases of friends, to be stronger in the graces among his supporters. All things, which unless vigilant, unless sober, unless industrious, men are not able to pursue, these he pursued with work and diligence.
Chapter 75
In this turning point (as it were) of his age--for I will conceal nothing, relying on your culture and wisdom--the reputation of his adolescence stuck a little close to the edge, because of his new meeting with a woman and an unlucky neighborhood and brashness of desires, which, when they had been closed up for too long and compressed and constricted early in life, suddenly poured themselves forth at times and spattered about all at once. From this sort of life--or I might say, from this gossip--for by no means was it as great as men say--truly from that gossip, whatever it was, he emerged and threw himself wholly out and sprang up, and was so far distant from this reputation of intimacy that now he propels himself away from the enmity and hatred of the same gossip.
---
* That is, the case Caelius prosecuted while Cicero was defending it; Cicero has to make it clear that he still thinks the prosecution was a bad idea, while also making it sound like a sign of strong moral character that Caelius took it up.
** ...yeah. No. Even allowing for awkwardness in translating impersonal verbs that take the dative into paired relative clauses, this makes no sense! I must be getting something deeply wrong on this sentence.
Chapter 72
Honestly, why was Marcus Caelius called into this court? The charge wasn’t referenced about him in a manner appropriate to this court, nor in fact anything of this type which is disconnected from the law, when it is joined with your severity. His first age was given to discipline and those arts by which we’re instructed towards this judicial use, towards what must be done for the republic, towards honor, glory, and dignity. Moreover, it was given to his older friends whose industry and self-control he most wished to emulate, and to those studies of his peers as the same course of praise which it seemed the best and most noble men sought.
Chapter 73
Moreover, when he added a little strength to his age, he was useful in Africa as an aid to the consul Q. Pompeius, a most chaste man and most diligent to all his duty; in which province his father’s business and possessions lay, and indeed a certain experience with the province was assigned to this age by his elders, not without cause. He returned from there highly esteemed in Pomepius’ judgement, as you all known by the man’s own testimony. He wanted his own industry to be known from that infamous accusation*, by the old custom and by the example of the young men who as the highest and most famous men sprang up in the state afterward.
Chapter 74
I would wish more strongly that the desire for glory had carried him elsewhere; but the time for this complaint has departed. He accused C. Antonius, my colleague, to which unhappy famous kindness nothing in the republic profits by memory, and to which intentional malice an opinion harms.** Afterwards he never conceded to anyone of his peers to be more involved in the businesses and cases of friends, to be stronger in the graces among his supporters. All things, which unless vigilant, unless sober, unless industrious, men are not able to pursue, these he pursued with work and diligence.
Chapter 75
In this turning point (as it were) of his age--for I will conceal nothing, relying on your culture and wisdom--the reputation of his adolescence stuck a little close to the edge, because of his new meeting with a woman and an unlucky neighborhood and brashness of desires, which, when they had been closed up for too long and compressed and constricted early in life, suddenly poured themselves forth at times and spattered about all at once. From this sort of life--or I might say, from this gossip--for by no means was it as great as men say--truly from that gossip, whatever it was, he emerged and threw himself wholly out and sprang up, and was so far distant from this reputation of intimacy that now he propels himself away from the enmity and hatred of the same gossip.
---
* That is, the case Caelius prosecuted while Cicero was defending it; Cicero has to make it clear that he still thinks the prosecution was a bad idea, while also making it sound like a sign of strong moral character that Caelius took it up.
** ...yeah. No. Even allowing for awkwardness in translating impersonal verbs that take the dative into paired relative clauses, this makes no sense! I must be getting something deeply wrong on this sentence.