ABSTRACT
XVII. From Marcus Coelius, an excellent young Roman knight at Lilybaeum, you carried off all you cared to take. Without scruple, you carried off all the furniture of the active, accomplished and exceptionally popular Gaius Cacurius. From Quintus Lutatius Diodorus, who through the kind offices of Quintus Catulus was made a Roman citizen by Lucius Sulla, you carried off a large and handsome table of citrus-wood, to the certain knowledge of everyone in Lilybaeum. I will not charge you with your treatment of a very proper victim of your villainy, Apollonius the son of Nico, of Drepanum now called Aulus Clodius, whom you despoiled and pillaged of all his admirable silver plate. Let that pass: for this man does not think himself wronged inasmuch as you rescued the fellow when he was already lost and the halter closing round his neck in that affair where you went shares with him in the patrimony of which he robbed his wards at Drepanum. Any theft of yours from him gives me actual pleasure; I hold that you have never done a more honest action than this. But it was certainly not a proper thing to carry off that statue of Apollo from Lyso, the leading citizen of Lilybaeum, in whose house you were a guest. You will tell me you bought it. I know you did - for ten pounds. 'Yes, I think so.' I know you did, I tell you. 'I will produce the record.' Still, it was not a proper transaction. And as for Heius, the boy whose guardian is Gaius Marcellus, and from whom you took a huge sum of money will you claim to have bought from him his chased goblets at Lilybaeum, or will you confess to having taken them?
