[60] In the circumstances just indicated, I do not think that he will deny having in his possession statues galore and too many paintings to count; yet I believe he is in the habit of declaring over and again that he bought the objects he plundered and stole – because, indeed, he was sent to Achaia, Asia, and Pamphylia on public expenses and with the title of a legate as buyer of statues and paintings. I have all the account books both of this man and of his father, and I have read and studied them with utmost care – of the father for as long as he lived, yours for as long as you say you kept them. For as concerns this man, judges, you will discover the following innovation. We have heard that someone never kept accounts; this is the common opinion about Antonius, a wrong one, for he kept them with utmost care; but may this count as one possible approach, though in no way to be approved. We have heard that someone else did not keep them from the start, but began to do so from a certain point in time; there is a certain rationale even to this approach. But that practice is assuredly new and absurd, which this man mentioned in his response to us when we demanded his accounts from him, namely that he kept them up to the consulship of M. Terentius and C. Cassius, but ceased to do so afterwards.
