Suetonius, Lives of Illustrious Men: Rhetoricians 29
Sextus Clodius, from Sicily, was a teacher of both Latin and Greek oratory. He had bad eyesight and a mean tongue and used to claim that he wore out his eyes in friendship with Marcus Antonius the Triumvir. He also said that Antony’s wife Fulvia, who had one cheek rather swollen, “directs the point of his pen”. For this he was more not less pleasing to Antony!
After Antony became consul, Clodius got a great gift from him, as Cicero objects in his Philippics: “You hire on a school teacher for the sake of his jokes, raised up an orator with you and your drinking-buddies’ jokes, and you have let him say whatever he wants about you, this thoroughly witty man.
Ah, but it is pretty easy to say things against you and yours. Look at how much this orator was paid. Listen to this senators; observe the wound to your nation. You gave to this orator Sextus Clodius two thousand Leontine acres which are untaxable—such a great price to learn nothing!”
V (29). Sextus Clodius, e Sicilia, Latinae simul Graecaeque eloquentiae professor, male oculatus et dicax, par oculorum in amicitia M. Antonii triumviri extrisse se aiebat; eiusdem uxorem Fulviam, cui altera bucca inflatior erat, acumen stili tentare dixit, nec eo minus, immo vel magis ob hoc Antonio gratus. A quo mox consule ingens etiam congiarium accepit, ut ei in “Philippicis” Cicero obicit: “Adhibes18 ioci causa magistrum, suffragio tuo et compotorum tuorum rhetorem, cui concessisti ut in te quae vellet diceret, salsum omnino hominem, sed materia facilis in te1 et in tuos dicta dicere. At quanta merces rhetori est data! Audite, audite, P. C., et cognoscite rei p. vulnera. Duo milia iugerum campi Leontini Sex. Clodio rhetori assignasti et quidem immunia, ut tanta mercede nihil sapere disceres.”
