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."

VI. CAIUS ALBUTIUS SILUS, of Novara [921], while, in the execution (529)
of the office of edile in his native place, he was sitting for the
administration of justice, was dragged by the feet from the tribunal by
some persons against whom he was pronouncing a decree. In great
indignation at this usage, he made straight for the gate of the town, and
proceeded to Rome. There he was admitted to fellowship, and lodged, with
Plancus the orator [922], whose practice it was, before he made a speech
in public, to set up some one to take the contrary side in the argument.
The office was undertaken by Albutius with such success, that he silenced
Plancus, who did not venture to put himself in competition with him.
This bringing him into notice, he collected an audience of his own, and
it was his custom to open the question proposed for debate, sitting; but
as he warmed with the subject, he stood up, and made his peroration in
that posture. His declamations were of different kinds; sometimes
brilliant and polished, at others, that they might not be thought to
savour too much of the schools, he curtailed them of all ornament, and
used only familiar phrases. He also pleaded causes, but rarely, being
employed in such as were of the highest importance, and in every case
undertaking the peroration only.

In the end, he gave up practising in the forum, partly from shame, partly
from fear. For, in a certain trial before the court of the One Hundred
[923], having lashed the defendant as a man void of natural affection for
his parents, he called upon him by a bold figure of speech, "to swear by
the ashes of his father and mother which lay unburied;" his adversary