Kitap 17
1
This is in fact, as they say, the force of that word, and paenitere is strictly used of none but voluntary acts, although our forefathers used that same word also in a different sense and connected paenitere with the words paene (almost) and paenuria (want). But that is another question, and will be spoken of in another place. This promise is not fulfilled. But with regard to the point at issue, giving to paenitere this same meaning which is commonly recognized, what Marcus Cicero said is not only not foolish, but in the highest degree elegant and witty. For since the adversaries and detractors of Marcus Caelius, inasmuch as he was of handsome person, made use of his appearance and figure to throw doubt upon his chastity, therefore Cicero, making sport of such an absurd charge as to impute to him as a fault the good looks which nature had given him, has deliberately adopted that very same false charge of which he is making fun, saying: Marcus Caelius is not sorry for not having been born ugly; so that by the very fact of speaking thus he might reproach his accusers and wittily show that they were doing an absurd thing in making Caelius' handsome person an accusation against him, just as if the person with which he was born depended upon his own volition.
2
Certain words from the first book of the Annals of Quintus Claudius, noted in a hasty reading.
