Book 1

pr.1. What you ask of me is more pleasant than easy. You bid me declare my opinion of those declaimers who fell within my own lifetime, and to gather, if any of their sayings have not yet slipped from my memory, whatever I can — so that, though they have been withdrawn from your own acquaintance, you may not merely take their reputation on trust but judge it for yourselves. It is, I confess, a pleasure to me to return to the studies of old and look back to my better years, and, since you complain that you could not hear men of such renown, to undo for you the wrong that time has done.

pr.2. But old age has already made me feel the loss of much that was once mine: it has dulled the sharpness of my eyes, blunted my hearing, and worn down the strength of my sinews. Among the faculties I have kept, memory is of all the parts of the mind the most delicate and frail, and the first that old age assails. That it once flourished in me, so as not only to serve my needs but to pass into a marvel, I do not deny: I would repeat two thousand names in the very order in which they had been recited, and when those who had gathered with me to hear our teacher each gave me a single line — more than two hundred lines in all — I would recite them back, beginning from the last and going up to the first.

pr.3. And my memory was quick not only to take in what I wished, but also dependable in holding fast what it had received. Now, shaken by age and by long disuse — which dissolves even a young man's powers — it has come to such a pass that, even if it can still produce something, it cannot promise it. For a long time I have drawn nothing from it. Since you command it, I shall test what it can do and search it through with every care. In part, indeed, my hopes are good: whatever I deposited with it as a boy or a young man it brings forth without hesitation, as though it were fresh or just heard; but whatever I entrusted to it within these last years it has so wholly lost and let go that, even if the same things are forced upon it again and again, I hear them each time as something new.

pr.4. So there is left in my memory as much as will satisfy you: for you do not ask me about the men you yourselves have heard, but about those who never reached your day. Have it as you wish: let an old man be sent back to school. One thing I must obtain — that you do not require me to follow any fixed order in collecting whatever comes to mind. For I must roam through all my studies and lay hold, here and there, of whatever turns up.

pr.5. The epigrams of the controversiae I shall perhaps set down in several places as having been delivered in a single declamation; for it is not while I am searching that I find a thing, but often what did not appear to me when I sought it stands ready when I am busy with something else; and certain sayings that hover before me and show themselves in part I cannot capture, while the same ones suddenly emerge when my mind is at ease and at rest. Sometimes, too, when I am engaged in serious business and hard at work, an epigram long sought in vain becomes a nuisance at the wrong moment. I must therefore accommodate myself to the caprices of my memory, which has long obeyed me only by sufferance.

pr.6. You do a necessary and useful thing, my young friends, in not being content with the examples of your own age but wishing to know those of an earlier one too. First, because the more examples one has examined, the more progress one makes in eloquence. No single model, however outstanding, is to be imitated, since the imitator never becomes the equal of his author. This is the nature of the case: the copy always falls short of the truth. Second, so that you may estimate how greatly talents decline from day to day, and by what unfairness of nature eloquence has gone backwards: whatever the Roman tongue has to set against arrogant Greece, or to prefer to it, came to flower around Cicero's time; all the talents that brought light to our studies were then born.

pr.7. Thereafter the thing has, day by day, been changed for the worse — whether through the luxury of the times (for nothing is so deadly to talent as luxury), or because, when the reward of that finest of pursuits had fallen away, the whole contest passed over to base things that thrive on great honour and profit, or by some fate whose grudging and perpetual law it is, in all things, that what has been raised to the heights should slide back to the depths, and faster, indeed, than . . .

pr.8. . . . they had risen. See how the talents of an idle youth lie torpid, and no one keeps vigil in the labour of a single honourable pursuit. Sleep and languor, and what is more shameful than sleep and languor — an industry in evil — have invaded their minds. Obscene devotion to singing and dancing holds them effeminate; to curl the hair and thin the voice to womanish endearments, to rival women in softness of body and to groom themselves with the filthiest refinements, is the very model of our young men.

pr.9. Which of your contemporaries — I will not say is talented enough, studious enough, but is man enough? Softened and unstrung, they keep, unwillingly, the manhood they were born to; assailants of others' chastity, careless of their own. Heaven forbid that eloquence should sink so low as to fall upon such men: I would not wonder at it, if she did not choose the minds into which she will enter. You are mistaken, my excellent young men, if you do not take that famous saying to be the word not of Marcus Cato but of an oracle. For what is an oracle? Surely the divine will uttered through the mouth of a man; and what holier priest could the godhead find for itself than Marcus Cato, through whom it would not so much instruct the human race as rebuke it? What, then, does that great man say? "An orator, my son Marcus, is a good man skilled in speaking."

pr.10. Go now, and seek orators among these depilated and polished creatures, men nowhere but in their lust. Such talents deserve such examples. Who is there that studies memory? Who that wishes to please, I do not say by great virtues, but by his own? Amid such general sloth, men readily pass off as their own the epigrams flung out by the most eloquent, and so they never cease to violate that most sacred eloquence which they cannot themselves attain. The more gladly, therefore, shall I do what you ask: whatever eloquent sayings of the most celebrated men I retain, I shall — lest they belong to any man privately — dedicate to the public.

pr.11. To the men themselves, too, I seem likely to render great service, men over whom oblivion hangs unless something is handed down to posterity to keep their memory alive. For of the greatest declaimers there generally survive either no notes at all, or — what is worse — false ones. So, that they may not be either unknown or known otherwise than they deserve, I shall render to each man his own with the strictest fidelity. I believe I heard all the men of great name in eloquence, with the exception of Cicero; and it was not age that robbed me even of Cicero, but the madness of the civil wars, which then ranged over the whole world and kept me confined within my native town. Otherwise I might have been present in that little hall in which he says he declaimed with two grown youths still wearing the toga praetexta, and might have come to know that genius which alone the Roman people possessed to match its empire; and, as men sometimes say loosely, but in his case should say with strict propriety, I might have heard the living voice.

pr.12. Now Cicero did not declaim the kind of controversiae we deliver today, nor even such as were delivered before his time, which they called theses. For this kind of subject in which we train is so new that even its name is new. We call them controversiae; Cicero called them causae. That other name, Greek indeed, but so translated into Latin that it serves as Latin — scholastica — is much more recent for controversia, just as declamation itself cannot be found in any old author before Cicero and Calvus, who draws a distinction in declamation; for he says: "To declaim is to speak at home with no ordinary care." He rightly judges the one a domestic exercise, the other true pleading. The very word has but lately appeared; for the practice itself only recently began to be in vogue. So it is easy for me to know from its cradle a thing born after me.

pr.13. In other matters I do not know whether I shall be conferring a favour upon you, but in one I receive one: for I shall often be compelled to revive the memory of Porcius Latro, my dearest companion, and to recall, with the greatest pleasure, a close friendship that ran from my earliest boyhood to his last day. Nothing was weightier than that man, nothing more charming, nothing more worthy of eloquence. No one commanded his own genius more, no one indulged it more. In either direction this vehement man knew no measure: he could neither break off his studies nor take them up again moderately.

pr.14. When he had roused himself to write, days were joined to nights, and without pause he pressed himself the harder, nor did he stop until he had collapsed; again, when he had relaxed, he gave himself over to every sport, every jest; and when he had betaken himself to the woods and the mountains, he would challenge in their endurance of rustic toil and their skill in hunting all those born among the woods and mountains, and would come to so great a craving for that way of life that he could scarcely be drawn back to his former habit. But when he had laid hold of himself and torn himself from coaxing leisure, he would throw himself into study with such force that he seemed not to have lost anything by his idleness —

pr.15. — but rather to have gained much by it. For all men it does good now and then to relax the mind: vigour is roused by leisure, and all the gloom brought on by unbroken and stubborn study is dispelled by the cheerfulness of a holiday. Yet to no one did the interval prove more plainly profitable. As often as he spoke after a break, he spoke far more keenly and forcefully: he exulted in renewed and unbroken strength, and drew from himself as much as he had desired. He did not know how to husband his powers, but ruled himself without restraint; and therefore his study ought to have been forbidden him, because it could not be governed. And so he too was wont, when he had broken himself with unremitting and never-interrupted exertion, to feel a weariness of the mind, which is no less than that of the body, but more hidden.

pr.16. His body was both naturally solid and toughened by much exercise, and therefore it never failed the assaults of his ardent spirit. His voice was strong, but coarse — darkened by his late hours and by neglect, not by nature; yet by the help of his lungs it was raised up, and though at the outset it seemed to have brought too little strength, it grew by the very act of speaking. He never took any care to exercise his voice: he could not unlearn that vigorous, rustic, Spanish way of his — to live as the case demanded, to do nothing for his voice's sake, not to lead it up gradually, step by step, from the lowest to the highest, nor again to descend from the highest pitch by equal intervals, not to disperse his sweat with oil, not to refresh his side by walking.

pr.17. Often, when he had spent the whole night working, he would come straight from his very meal to declaim. And he could in no way be prevented from doing the thing most hostile to the body: he generally worked by lamplight after dinner, and would not let his food be evenly digested in sleep and rest, but drove it, disordered and scattered, into his head; and so he both dulled the sharpness of his eyes and changed his colour. His memory was naturally happy, yet much aided by art. He never reread what he was about to say in order to learn it by heart: he had learned it by heart when he wrote it; and this may seem the more marvellous in him, because he wrote not slowly and anxiously, but with almost the same impetus with which he spoke.

pr.18. Those who torture their own writings, who debate over single words, must at last fix in their minds what they bring before them so often; but whoever has a swift pen has a slower memory. In him there was not only the felicity of a natural memory, but the highest art, both for grasping what he had to hold and for guarding it — so much so that he retained even all the declamations he had ever delivered. He had therefore made his notebooks needless for himself: he used to say that he wrote in his mind. He delivered his thoughts in such a way that in no single word did his memory ever fail him. He had the fullest knowledge of all history: he would bid someone name a general, and at once recite that man's deeds at a run; so ready was whatever had once gone down into his mind.

pr.19. I see, my young friends, that you marvel beyond measure at this excellence of his. I wish you to admire other things in him; this, which seems to you a wonder, can be imparted by no laborious art. Within the small space of a very few days anyone could do what Cineas did, who, sent as envoy by Pyrrhus to the Romans, on the next day, a stranger and a newcomer, greeted by their own names both the senate and the whole city crowd thronging round the senate; or what that man did who declared a new poem just recited by a poet to be his own, and at once recited it from memory, though the man whose poem it really was could not do so; or what Hortensius did, who, challenged by Sisenna, sat through a whole day's auction and listed, in their order, all the items and their prices and the buyers, with the bankers checking, so that he was wrong in nothing. You wish to learn this at once? I shall keep your eagerness in suspense and make room for a second favour; meanwhile I shall pay you this debt by which I am already bound.

pr.20. I seem to have set out for you more about my Latro than you wished to hear; I myself had foreseen this too — that I should find it hard to tear myself away from his memory whenever the occasion offered. For now, however, I shall be content with this; but as often as memory invites me, I shall most gladly contrive that you may come to know him whole, and I may know him again. One thing only I shall not put off: that a false opinion of him has gained strength in men's minds. For they think that he spoke forcibly, indeed, but with too little subtlety, whereas in him, if any other virtue was present, subtlety too was present.

pr.21. The thing which I now observe no one to do, he always did: before he began to speak, he would sit and propose the questions of the controversia he was about to deliver — which is a mark of the highest confidence. For the delivery itself has many hiding-places, nor can it easily appear, if subtlety has been lacking in some place, when the flow of speech hampers the listener's judgement and conceals the speaker's; but where the limbs are set out bare, if anything is wanting in number or in order, it is plain. What then? Whence this reputation about him? Nothing is more unjust than those who think subtlety nowhere present except where there is nothing but subtlety; and in him, since all the oratorical virtues were present, this foundation was buried beneath so many and so great structures raised upon it — it was not lacking in him, but it did not stand out; and I am inclined to think that the greatest fault of subtlety is to display itself too much. The ambushes that lie hidden do the more harm; most useful is a dissembled subtlety, which appears in its effect but lies hidden in its form.

pr.22. I shall therefore insert, in certain places, the questions of the controversiae, just as they were propounded by him, and shall not weave arguments beneath them, lest I both exceed measure and miss my purpose, since it is the epigrams you wish to hear, and whatever I build onto them would be tiresome. This too my Latro used to do — to love epigrams. When we were fellow-pupils with Marullus the rhetor, a man dry enough, who said very few things prettily, but in no common manner — when Marullus laid the leanness of his own speech to the charge of the controversia and said: "I am forced, walking through a thorny place, to set my feet down warily," Latro said: "By Hercules, your feet do not tread on thorns, they have them"; and at once he himself delivered epigrams that could be inserted into Marullus's arguments at the very point of his declaiming.

pr.23. He was wont, too, to use this kind of exercise: on one day to write nothing but epiphonemata, on another nothing but enthymemes, on another nothing but those transferable sayings which we properly call sententiae, which have nothing bound up with the controversia itself, but are aptly enough transferred elsewhere — such as the things said about fortune, about cruelty, about the age, about riches. This kind of saying he called "furniture." He used also to write out by themselves the figures that any controversia might admit. And do men think that he was lacking in this virtue, when his genius abounded even in this endowment? But his judgement was the stricter; it did not please him to bend his speech aside, nor ever to depart from the straight road, unless either necessity compelled or great usefulness advised it.

pr.24. He used to say that the figure was invented not for adornment's sake but for support — that what would offend the ears if said openly might creep in obliquely and by stealth. It was, he said, the height of madness to twist aside a speech that one was free to keep straight. But I will not detain you any longer: I know how hateful to me is the procession before the Circus games. I shall begin with that controversia which I remember my Latro to have declaimed first, while still quite a young man, in Marullus's school, when he had already begun to make a name.

1.1. THE LAW: Children shall maintain their parents, or be imprisoned. THE THEME: A man who had two sons disinherited one of them. The disinherited son was adopted by a rich man. He grew rich, and his natural father, falling into poverty, was maintained by him against the order of the rich father, who therefore disinherits him a second time. — I lay it to luxury: whatever we ever poured out in immoderate bounty is all consumed in the keep of two old men. When my father forbade me, he kept saying: "He himself would give me no maintenance, if I were in want." He had already come to such a pass that he placed all his hope of a last subsistence in that one house alone, in which he had both a son he had disinherited and an enemy. Behold, death overtook him in his need: what will you do? Your brother is more to be buried by you than maintained. Whoever was asked said: "What of it? Can so wealthy a brother not maintain his brother?" The wretched old man lost, through your riches, even the coaxing tone that might have begged a coin.

1.2. "He himself," says he, "forbade me to maintain him." Do you call the imitation of another's fault innocence? Do you not even reckon how great that cruelty is — that if a man does not maintain his brother, he is not even to be maintained by his son? Why do you boast of the adoption? I came to you only when I had a rich father. Spare me, I beg, father: we have the gods present among us. You know you act in safety: even if you disinherit me, I shall maintain you. My crime must be confessed: I was too slow to pity; and so I pay the penalty — I am in want.

1.3. My parents, though their hatred is mutual in all else, agree only in branding me. O happy spectacle, if I can bring you back into harmony; and let me try, for your very faces urge it. Rise, fathers; come forward, judges: of my two parents the one has been saved for me, the other is yet to be saved. Stretch out your hands to one another in reconciliation; add me, as a mutual pledge, in the middle of the bond. Between you as you contend, I, in the middle, am crushed. Shall I then watch starve to death the man by whose ashes I am to swear? All happiness is unstable and uncertain. Who would have believed that Marius, lying upon the mud-bank, had been a consul or would be one? But why fetch examples from so far off, when one is present who saw him? What do you think the fortunate need not fear?

1.4. What must the unfortunate despair of? OF JUNIUS GALLIO: I will declare why you disinherit me: do you declare why you adopted me. Some things come about as new. For my part, I do not wonder that pity is laid to my charge; I wonder that this man lays it to my charge; for I have so borne myself that by this crime I bind two fathers to me. Each loves me, each in his misery longs to maintain me, each forbids it. He is not at peace either with himself or with fortune. Reconcile at last these men — good men, indeed, but stubborn. Do not require of me which of them gave the cause of the quarrel: each is an uncle, each is a father. Both his brother's fortune and his brother's temper have passed over to this man. I am compassionate: I would not have changed my father, if I could have changed my nature. OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS:

1.5. It is the law of fortune to furnish what you demand. Have pity: chance is changeable; victors have turned their backs to the vanquished, and those whom fortune had advanced she has forsaken. Why should I cite Marius, in his sixth consulship begging at Carthage, in his seventh ruling at Rome? But, not to send you among more examples of unstable fortune, look who it is that is asked for maintenance, and who it is that asks. OF JUNIUS OTHO THE FATHER: Fear change: he too lost nothing from his goods sooner than his son. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER:

1.6. Will you not open to me your household gods? I am no burdensome guest; I bring but one old man. By this fault, father, I won your favour. An unknown old man comes; I wish to pass by in silence; he entreats me by his father. Shall someone, then, perish of hunger who prays that his son may survive him? What shall I say this is, that they disinherit me so dangerously? That these men change their fortune as often as I change my father? Be reconciled: amid funereal battle-lines armed hands are stretched out in pledge of peace. The whole world had perished, had not pity ended its wrath; or, if hatreds so stubborn please you, spare me. Tossed between two fathers, the son of each, yet ever disinherited by the more fortunate, set between two perils, what shall I do? Those who maintain are disinherited; those who do not maintain beg.

1.7. This one thing, father, I call the gods to witness: I leave you rich. OF CESTIUS PIUS: For such a work I had prepared myself: I wished to bring the brothers back into harmony. Is this what you reproach me with? But unless I obtain that they be good brothers, I shall obtain that they not be bad fathers. Each loved me, each made vows for me: how much would it be if I said, "Each maintained me"? What the cause of their quarrel was I do not know; I fear that this man did the wrong first: he was the first to fall into want. What do you reproach me with, father? Pity, I think. I know of a man in this city who was adopted for that very crime. "He refused," says he, "to maintain his brother." You have found something I might defend. Can I raise children, if the first thing I must tell them is that their grandfather perished of hunger? You were not deceived as to what I am: you knew, when you adopted me. I have been twice disinherited: I wish to plead both my cases, neither by myself; let the other stand by me — my cause shall always have a father for its advocate. Let each love the other: each loved me. Do you wish that man to pay a true penalty? Let him feel what a wrong he did to so good a brother.

1.8. OF POMPEIUS SILO: Of your father I deserved well, though through my age I cannot have known him; yet he too has a benefit of mine: I maintained his two sons. Rise, unhappy old man. What? Do you think he weeps because he is in want? No — because he disinherited, because he did not maintain. OF ARGENTARIUS: You see — I began to be generous in your own house: it was because of me he took a wife, when perhaps he might have adopted a young man. These were the words of the man as he disinherited me: "Go to the man you love more than your father." Not all a father's commands are to be obeyed. I do nothing new in your case: you know that I did not obey my former father either. He came, with beard unkempt and hair foul with squalor, his limbs trembling not from age but from hunger, his face half-eaten and thin, his voice crushed by fasting so that it could scarcely be heard, his eyes sunk deep within and scarcely lifted —

1.9. — I maintained him. How, you ask? As I maintained you. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: Suppose me to be today not disinherited but adopted. I wish to foretell certain things to my future father: this man whom you wish to adopt maintained his father's enemy against his father's will. He left a wealthy house with an easy mind, to live with a beggar. You ought to know this fault of his: he is obstinate in showing pity to the wretched. Nor yet have I any cause to complain of this fault of mine: by it I found one father, by it I lost another. How many fathers pray for a son like me! By these I am disinherited. He is a man: will you not have me maintain a man? He is a citizen: will you not have me maintain a citizen? He is a friend: will you not have me maintain a friend? He is a kinsman: will you not have me maintain a kinsman? Thus one comes to "father." He is a man, he is a citizen, he is a friend, he is a kinsman. On this condition, then, it will be no fault to have held out a coin — unless I shall have said:

1.10. — "He is my father?" OF VIBIUS GALLUS: I shall go the rounds with you, father, from one strange door to another; I shall show to all both me, who gave the maintenance, and you, who refused it. OF ROMANIUS HISPO: I know, father, that what you say is better: if I could do that, I should never have been disinherited. I confess it is a fault. This too my former father wished to mend in me, and could not. You drove me into the trap: the man who was disinheriting me kept saying, "This ought not to be done"; you said it ought; I believed you. "He gave me no maintenance," he says. Did you lack it? Whoever is asked for maintenance by a beggar does nothing more than point: "Go to your brother, go to your son." Already some pray over us the same fortune. Believe me, the tongue of the people is holy. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: Take away your riches, which the surge of uncertain fortune drives now this way, now that; be reconciled:

1.11. — I am innocent. THE OTHER SIDE. OF VALLIUS SYRIACUS: He has resolved to grow great out of my unpopularity: shall we old men follow where a young man's ambition calls, and lend him an audience? He can boast of himself better than he can defend himself. Is my fear a just one — that I may write down as my heir an ingrate, and leave behind an enemy? Among the other things I confess I have in common with my enemy, this too is one: we have both led the most unhappy and the most wretched of lives, save in this alone, that each of us has seen the other in want. He ordered me to be cast out, with insults of words added; he raised his hands to heaven, confessing himself debtor for this spectacle, and then for the first time prayed his brother for his life. From the patrimony made ready for me I took no joy — as one stunned by such a stupor of calamities — save that I was to give everything to this man here, and refuse everything to that one. It is plain to us that there are gods: he who did not maintain is in want; he who did not receive his brother into his house remains out of doors. Fortune has now made my power equal to his power, save only that I cannot be the first to act.

1.12. I adopted you when you were disinherited: now that you adopt, I disinherit. OF VIBIUS RUFUS: When I was in want I would say: "He has avenged himself enough, in that I, the partner of a wealthy enemy, now ask a steward for my day's keep." OF MARULLUS: Will he dare to beg his life, who would rather die than have his own words said to himself? To many I owe pity, to many I have given it. Whoever it is that any calamity makes like me, I hold him exactly as though he touched me by a degree of kinship. I know how bitter it is to entreat strangers; I know how grievous it is to be driven away by one's own. I know how cruel it is, day after day, both to pray for death and to beg for life. Even if you do not hate the man who wronged me, I hate the man who wronged you.

1.13. THE DIVISION. The division of controversiae of old was simple; whether the recent kind is more subtle or only more laborious, you yourselves will judge: I shall set out both what the ancients devised and what their successors added. Latro made these the questions: he divided into law and equity — whether the son could be disinherited, and whether he ought to be. Whether he could be disinherited he asked thus: whether it was necessary for him to maintain his father, and so whether he cannot be disinherited for having done what the law compelled. This he divided into these questions: whether a disinherited son ceases to be a son; whether he ceases to be one who has been not only disinherited but also adopted by another. Even if he was a son, whether anyone who has not maintained his father is to be punished — as in the case of one sick, bound, or captured; whether the law admits any excuse for a son; whether this man could admit it. Whether he ought to be disinherited he asked through these: whether, even if the man was unworthy to be maintained, this son nevertheless acted rightly in maintaining him; and then whether the man was worthy to be maintained.

1.14. The modern declaimers added to the Greek authors that first question: whether an adopted son can be disinherited. This Cestius used. Gallio added another question: whether, if even an adopted son can be disinherited, it can be for that fault which was known to the adopter before he adopted him. But this hangs on the side of equity, and is more a treatment than a question. Gallio doubled Latro's first question thus: it was lawful for me to maintain you even though you forbade it; and then, it was not lawful for me not to maintain him. In the first part he maintained this: that a son cannot be disinherited for what is within his own power; and that no one can be forbidden to show pity. What if you forbid me to weep, when I have seen a man in calamity? What if you forbid me to favour one in peril for some honourable deed? Our feelings are within our own power. For there are certain laws unwritten, yet surer than all that are written: though I be a son in a father's power, it is lawful for me both to hold out a coin to a beggar and earth to a corpse. It is unjust not to stretch out a hand to the fallen: this is the common law of the human race. No one asks for a grudging right by which he is to benefit another.

1.15. Latro pressed this point vehemently: I did not act by reason, I was conquered by feeling. When I had seen my father in want, my mind did not stand firm in me; what you forbade I do not know. He said this was not to be treated as a question; yet it was more powerful than any question. Arellius Fuscus the father moved this, at the end, as though a question: I thought that, however you forbade it, you nevertheless wished your brother maintained; with that look you forbade — or so you seemed to me. Cestius more boldly: not content to say, "I thought you wished it," he added: "You did wish it, and to this very day you wish it." And by his own figure he said all the reasons why he ought to wish it. "Why then do you disinherit me?"

1.16. "I think it is because you are vexed that the duty was snatched from you." LATRO gave a plain colour for the young man: he had nothing whereby to excuse himself, but something whereby to glory. I could not, he said, endure that hard spectacle. Do you think it was only my composure that escaped me? My mind escaped me, my spirit did not stand firm in me, my feet did not suffice to the service of holding up my body, my eyes grew numb with a sudden darkness. Otherwise, if I had then been in my right mind, should I have waited until I was asked? FUSCUS introduced that colour which he often used to employ, the colour of religious awe: nature moved me, he said; piety moved me; the changefulness of human chances, so plainly proved by this example, moved me. Fortune seemed to stand before my eyes and to say such things as these: "These are the men who do not maintain their own."

1.17. ALBUCIUS with this colour: my father, he said, came to me, and spoke no submissive words; he did not entreat, but, as one must deal with a son, ordered me to maintain him; he recited the law, which I always thought was written even for an uncle. And then he said: I rendered not as much as I owed to a father, but as much as I could steal from one who forbade it. BLANDUS with a different colour: he came suddenly, hideous with squalor and tears. O Fortune, how grievous are your turns! That man, rich and proud but a moment ago, begged maintenance, begged his son, begged the son he had disinherited. You ask how long he begged? May the gods not suffer that wickedness, that he begged long — yet longer than you did. You ask what I did? What I was wont to do.

1.18. POMPEIUS SILO with this colour: it moved me, he said, that he came with no claim of his right, nothing in his power, but as an uncle would come. I, for my part, did not wait for words, did not wait for prayers: I embraced my father and kissed him, and gave him maintenance. In this one thing I acted cruelly — that I said his brother had given it: I seemed not to maintain but to reproach. TRIARIUS with this colour: I feared, he said, that if I had not maintained him, I should be disinherited by my father; I knew how I had pleased him. ARGENTARIUS with this colour: my father came to me, overwhelmed with squalor, trembling with failing limbs; he begged maintenance. I ask you, judges: what ought I to do if these things should happen? For that man I do not ask: he knows what I shall do. Will you suffer me to do a wrong to one father, and bring odium upon the other? When he forbade me to give maintenance — if there is any faith in me — I did not think he forbade it from the heart; he is acting, I said, as a procurer of my own glory, that I may seem to have maintained my father even though forbidden.

1.19. MARULLUS pleaded with a new colour: an old man fell at my feet, squalid in beard and hair. Some man or other, I said, knew not who he was, knew my disposition to pity. I raised him up, though I knew not who he was: do you wish me to thrust him off, because he is my father? CESTIUS with this colour: I reasoned thus with myself: he is my father; his brother sees him in want, does not pity him, does not furnish maintenance; this means, I said, he does not wish to snatch the duty from his son, he knows that in this fortune of my kin this is now my part. In this I erred — that I did not go to my father of my own accord; but I kept saying: I do not wish to render this man anything more than I rendered the other; I waited until the uncle should come to me, and now too I shall wait. My father came to me: what was I to do? Lead him to his father? I did not: he is rightly angry. For if he had maintained him, he might indeed have lightened his brother's fortune, but aggravated his cause.

1.20. Latro did not approve the colour of BUTEO: he said that he had furnished but little, only enough to keep breath in him; and when he had described his pallor and his leanness, he added: it is plain that he is maintained by enemies. When LATRO disapproved this colour, he used this epigram: nothing, he said, is to be taken from a disinherited man's glory in his crime. HISPANUS used this colour more gracefully; for he added something to the pity due to one not maintained most kindly, and took nothing from his own piety: how, he said, do I maintain him? I send him scanty food by stealth, and whatever I can take from my own table I hold out to the hungry old man. Do you not believe it, you who know how you maintained me?

1.21. As for the colour on the other side, which is the harder, LATRO said that this was to be followed: that we should bring on inexorable and burning hatreds, born of the gravest wrongs. After the manner of Thyestes, he said, the father ought not merely to be angry but to rage. He himself in his declamation used, to loud applause, that line of tragedy: "Why does he flee his brother? He himself knows why." Following this colour, SYRIACUS VALLIUS seemed to set down a harsh thought not harshly, in his narrative, thus: we have both led the most unhappy and the most wretched of lives, save in this alone, that each of us has seen the other in want. With equal effect he seemed to have expressed the brothers' hatred by this epigram:

1.22. Hear, judges, how greatly I was in want: I begged my brother. This part I remember being declaimed at Cestius's by ALFIUS FLAVUS, to hear whom report had drawn me; who, though he still wore the toga praetexta, was of such repute that as a boy he was known to the Roman people for his eloquence. Cestius always both praised his genius and feared it: he said that so great a genius, so untimely ripe, was not likely to live long; but he was heard amid so great a concourse of names that Cestius rarely dared to declaim after him. He himself did every harm to his own genius; yet that natural force shone out, which, after many years — though buried by sloth and unstrung by verse-writing — nevertheless kept its vigour. But something outside his eloquence was always commending his eloquence: in the boy his very age lent a charm to his genius; in the young man, his idleness.

1.23. He, declaiming the part of the disinheriting father, delivered to loud applause this epigram: Who are you, to pass sentence on a father's deed? He sinned then; you sin now. We do not refer our hatreds to you as arbiter: we have the gods for judges. And that epigram: We hear of brothers' fabled struggles, incredible had we ourselves not been alive — impious feasts, a day made dark by detestable kinslaying: in this one way alone did that brother deserve to be maintained by his brother. How innocently do I avenge myself against kinslaying! I give him back his son.

1.24. CESTIUS did not approve this colour as too tight-drawn, but said it must be tempered; and he himself used this colour, which he introduced at the very beginning: someone wonders that, when we two — I and my son — have received the gravest wrong from my brother, I alone am angry. There is no cause for wonder: my son has already been satisfied. You ought, he said, to have begged me to furnish it myself; you ought to have led him to me; you ought to have attempted a reconciliation, not to have hunted a reputation for piety out of our quarrel. Perhaps, when I was in want, I would have begged my brother, had you not been there; perhaps he would have begged me, had you not been there; we may yet come to agreement, if there be not in the midst one whom we wretched, stubborn men may prefer to beg.

1.25. HERMAGORAS in this controversia passed from the proem to the narrative elegantly, in a very rare manner, so that in one and the same thing there was a transition, an epigram, and a figure; but, as it pleased Latro, a figure that wounds, not one that tickles: . . . On the other side GALLIO too passed from the proem to the narrative by an epigram thus: why should I not be unwilling to have a son in common with this man — with whom I would I had had no father in common either? DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS expressed that thought, bandied about by the Latins, most briefly, in a very rare manner whereby an epigram is completed in two words; nor indeed can it be done in fewer . . . EUCTEMON, a slight declaimer but a sweet one, expressed nobly and charmingly that thought, harassed equally by all, by which a reconciliation of the brothers is attempted . . .

2.1. THE LAW: A priestess must be chaste and of chaste stock, pure and of pure stock. THE THEME: A maiden was captured by pirates and sold; she was bought by a procurer and set up as a prostitute. She begged of those who came to her the price of her chastity. A soldier who came to her she could not move by entreaty; he used force; she killed him. She was put on trial and acquitted, and sent back to her own people. She seeks a priesthood. — Your priestess would still be living in a brothel, had she not killed a man. What she suffered among the barbarians I do not know: what she could have suffered I do know. To a priestess not even a clean master fell by lot. Let the procurers be absent from this forum, let the harlots be absent, lest anything too little holy meet the eye while a priestess is being chosen. If nothing else, at least everyone who thought you foul has kissed you. O excellent defence of chastity: "She killed a soldier" — but, by Hercules, you did not kill the procurer. You were led into the brothel, you received your place, the price was fixed, the placard was inscribed: thus far inquiry can be made into you; the rest I do not know. Why do you summon me into the little cell and onto the obscene couch? It is of a priestess's chastity that the question here is asked. "No one," she says, "robbed me of my virginity": but all came as though to rob you of it; all departed as though they had robbed you. What good to me is a priestess whose chastity is held on sufferance? If your mother had been a prostitute, it would harm you: for your sake the priesthood would not be given to your children. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS.

2.2. What you did shut up within, we ought not to ask and cannot know. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: You killed a man. What do you answer? "He was offering me violence." Yes, I suppose vows are to be made that a priestess may keep her freedom — will you entrust them to a captive? Vows are to be made for chastity — will you entrust them to a prostitute? Vows are to be made for soldiers — will you entrust them to this woman? That was all that was wanting — that the temples should take back those whom either prison or brothel has cast out. OF MARULLUS: That we may know she was in a procurer's house, she is winning; that we may know she was among pirates, she is bloody. "No one," she says, "touched me." Give me the procurer's accounts: the takings will agree. Come now — what if someone came who was stubborn? What if someone desired this very thing, that you were a virgin?

2.3. What if someone, that you might not be able to refuse, brought a sword? OF PUBLIUS VINICIUS: Make her a priestess who may either honourably remain what she always was, or feel the penalty if she has ceased to be it. Of what boldness are you, girl? Even if we did not fear for ourselves, you ought to fear for yourself. Each man's conscience is subject in one way to the godhead's power, in another to our estimation: we have seen only what you did openly, they see even what is secret. I should call you unworthy of the priesthood, had you merely passed through a brothel. Shall the lictor going before clear the way for this woman? Shall the praetor yield her the road, shall the consuls yield their supreme command? Shall every prostitute that plies her trade flee at your approach? It would not be lawful for a priestess to have a maidservant like you: let it not be lawful for such a one to be made priestess. For as to what concerns the lot — that the rest of the maidens might not be defiled, this one was set apart. Do you think yourself chaste, because you are a hated prostitute? She stood naked on the shore for the buyer's disdain; every part of her body was both inspected and handled. Do you wish to hear the outcome of the auction? A pirate sells, a procurer buys, nothing is held back. You were brought to a place where you could do nothing more honourable than die. You begged for alms more earnestly than you now beg for the priesthood. "Fortune," she says, "forced me to suffer these things; all ought to pity me." And I do pity you, girl; but we do not make priestesses of women to be pitied. With us the highest honour is not the solace of the worst misfortunes.

2.4. OF MENTO: I would have you respect your ears and your majesty, since in this case I must of necessity name a brothel, a procurer, harlot's earnings, a homicide. Who would believe it? Amid these things a priestess is sought. But, by Hercules, a future priestess ought to have heard nothing of all this. The chief thing known of your priestess is that she stood for sale; her chief virtue, that she killed; her chief good fortune, that she was acquitted. A priestess cannot be hoped for in one in whom a prostitute can be hoped for: with different eyes does the procurer appraise a maiden, with different eyes the pontiff. OF BLANDUS: "I am a virgin," she says: "ask the pirate-captain, if you doubt; ask the gladiator whether, when asked, he spared my virginity." I do not refute it — provided you know that the temples are closed to such witnesses of yours. At the auction no one would bid, once it became known that she had been a slave to pirates. That was not the face of a virgin, that firmness, that boldness fearing not even an armed man.

2.5. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Do not fear, girl, you are chaste: but praise yourself thus to a husband, not to a temple. You were called a harlot, you stood in a common place, a placard was set above your cell, you received the comer. The rest — even were I in a common place, I would rather be silent. OF POMPEIUS SILO: She is received with the kisses of harlotry, taught its blandishments, and fashioned to every movement. Turn away your ears, you who would seek the priesthood, while I tell the rest: I shall bring to you nothing doubtful, you shall hear nothing but what the neighbouring city saw. You, a priestess? What if you had only been captured, what if you had only been prostituted, what if you had only been a homicide, what if you had only been a defendant? OF ROMANIUS HISPO.

2.6. Do you at all deny this — that you yet wrestled with the man, who in that struggle must of necessity first have been on top of you? The procurer added that the soldier was rightly killed, since he had dared more than was permitted against a prostitute. You won over the people: did you win over the procurer too? Did you win over that pirate whom you could not kill? OF ARGENTARIUS: "I killed an armed man," she says. What of the unarmed? She glories in the killing of one whom I am not sure she did not kill too late.

2.7. THE NARRATIVE OF CESTIUS PIUS: She was so guarded at home that she could be seized; so dear to her own that, once seized, she was not ransomed; the pirates so spared her when seized that they sold her to a procurer; the procurer so bought her that he might prostitute her; she so begged those who came that there was need of a sword. Her name, cast into the urn, did not come out — it was cast out. It was time now to draw lots: the urn was purged. You stood, girl, in a brothel: already, though no man violated you, the place itself violated you. You stood among harlots, you stood adorned so as to be able to please the people, in the dress the procurer had given; your name hung on your brow; you received the wages of unchastity, and the hands that were to offer holy things to the gods bore takings to the procurer; when you besought the embraces of those who entered — that you might win all else — you begged with a kiss. Maidservants are not bought for a priestess out of brothels; in a priestess's presence men abstain from obscenities. Not without cause does the lictor attend a priestess: had you met her, he would have driven you off as a harlot.

2.8. It is not credible that the pirates restrained themselves from lust — pirates wild with every cruelty, to whom all right and wrong is a sport, brigands at once of lands and seas, whose every assault upon another's goods is made by arms; cruel in their very brow and inured to human blood, carrying before them fetters and chains, heavy burdens for captives. From their lusts could you keep them off — men for whom, amid so many far greater crimes, to ravish a maiden is innocence? But the brothel received you. Every sordid and injurious throng flows in there, nor does any man come there to judge. But did all favour your stories? Were all persuaded? Was no one found, in so great a throng of men coming and going, who would mock your fortune? So then — when you have lived as innocently as you claim, do you, who suffered these things, believe there are gods? "I suffered nothing," she says. This is enough for a bride, too little for a priestess. Where have you been until now? Begone, you are unknown. Where have you not been? Begone, you are too well known. OF PUBLIUS

2.9. ASPRENAS: I speak against her, driven by enmity towards no one; for what hatred, what enmity can anyone have toward a woman whom no one of her fellow-citizens knew before she stood for sale? I am moved by regard for all the maidens, on whom a grave sentence is passed today, if in the city there can be found no woman chaster than a harlot, none purer than a homicide. Did the pirates keep you inviolate? A pirate, a procurer, a slaver would not have abstained from a priestess. Are we to believe in a priestess's chastity on the security of such sureties? You lay in a pirate's skiff; you were handled by someone's hand, kissed by someone's mouth, embraced by someone's arms. Did a pirate keep you better than your father? You consorted with men bloody and smeared with human blood: thence, surely, comes your power to kill a man.

2.10. Proclaim that you are freeborn: what do you expect, once you have come into a brothel? Already every temple is shut against you. She is fouled by the kisses of fellow-slaves, tossed about amid the jests of drunken banqueters, dressed now in a boy's, now in a woman's attire: from there you are not to be ransomed even by a father. No woman about whom a question is asked is chaste enough. I would not choose you priestess, even if you had been a slave to a priestess. To whom do we owe it to believe that our priestess is a virgin? To a harlot, a procurer, pirates: for this is the sum of the witnesses. A priestess would have deserved the chief pontiff's chastisement, had she ransomed you from a brothel. The whole crowd of the lustful gathered and ran together to the new harlot. This at least you will confess: your chastity is held on sufferance. So many gladiators entered your cell, so many young men, so many drunkards — and all of them, before the soldier, unarmed? I say she stood for sale; she says she even begged. The chastity of my priestess I owe even to the executioner.

2.11. OF JUNIUS GALLIO: The law is exacting: to the priesthood it admits none but women of unbroken — not holiness only, but good fortune; it inquires into ancestors, into the body, into the life: see how you can satisfy so fastidious a law. You were captured by pirates; among slaves, among homicides, in the narrows of that skiff you took your walks: let us see what the savagery of enemies, the lust of barbarians, the licence of masters, could have dared upon you. I am sure, judges, that when you hear of this barbarian savagery, you wish her well, that she may change her servitude as soon as may be. The pirates kept her safe as men do who mean to sell to a procurer; the procurer kept her safe so that she should be forced to stand in that rank, to feed at the same table, to live in a place where, even if you suffer no outrage, you see it.

2.12. Perhaps someone was found whom this very thing inflamed — that you begged. But did the procurer himself spare you? Do we not know those men to whom, in such a trade, this is especially pleasing — that they pluck untouched virginity? Did the procurer keep you, whom he meant to prostitute to the people's lust? Did the procurer keep you so, as we keep a chaste woman among the chaste? "I won them all over," she says. If anyone doubted whether she was a harlot, let him hear how coaxing she is. You clung in embraces, you bargained with a kiss, so that — most fortunate as you were — you begged unchastely for your chastity. What shall I do with a woman skulking within her own crimes? When I say, "You suffered violence," she says, "I killed"; when I say, "You killed a man," she says, "He was offering me violence." Our priestess defends her unchastity by homicide, her homicide by unchastity. THE DIVISION. Latro divided into these questions:

2.13. whether by the law she cannot become a priestess; and even if the law does not bar her, whether she is fit for the priesthood. Whether she is barred by the law he divided into these two: whether she is chaste, whether she is pure. Whether she is chaste he divided into these: whether chastity refers only to virginity, or to abstinence from all base and obscene acts. For I grant that you are a virgin, but one handled by everyone's kisses; even if short of unchastity, you have still wallowed with men: are you chaste, such as she can be thought to be whom the law wishes to be harmed even by an unchaste mother? Even if chastity refers to virginity alone, whether this woman is a virgin.

2.14. He said that the school of Apollodorus, indeed, holds that the themes should be fixed and safe, but that here the controversia does not resist this suspicion; for it is not yet laid down that she is a virgin, and there are many reasons why it is credible that she is not. He added this: in short, even if I do not bring it about that the judges believe she is no virgin, I shall yet attain this — that they think her unworthy of the priesthood, since it can be doubted whether she is a virgin. Whether she is pure he divided into these: whether, even if she rightly killed a man, she is nevertheless not pure, being defiled by homicide; and then, whether she rightly killed an innocent man wishing to make use of a prostituted body. She was acquitted: she showed not that she was pure, but that she was safe. Whether she is fit he divides into such treatments as each man pleases: whether she is fit — so unhappy as to be captured, to be sold, and sold to a procurer of all men, to be prostituted, to be forced to kill a man, to plead her case.

2.15. CESTIUS went deeper still, and objected that she had been held so cheap by her own people that she was not ransomed. SILO POMPEIUS, while following the precept by which we are bidden to make, as often as we can, a controversia of all the words of the law, raised this question: "chaste and of chaste stock." The law, he said, when it says "of chaste stock," refers this not only to parents but to all with whom the maiden has consorted; for it does not add "of chaste parents," but when it says "of chaste stock," it means that those from whom the maiden comes should be chaste. I understand, he said, many things under this word. When it says "of chaste stock," I understand "from chaste household gods" — you come from unchaste ones; I understand "from chaste teachings" — you come from the most obscene ones; for what have you learned? — and whatever could be said in this place. The same he did with that other part, "pure and of pure stock."

2.16. ROMANIUS HISPO, using an accuser's pugnacity, denied that she was pure, referring this not to the killing but to the body; he argued that she is impure who has given a kiss to the impure, who has taken food with the impure. ALBUCIUS divided the controversia by a figure; for he said: let us suppose three women seek the priesthood — one who was captured, a second who was prostituted, a third who killed a man: to all I say no; and so he pleaded the case against each one. ARELLIUS FUSCUS divided thus: I shall prove her unworthy of the priesthood, first even if she be chaste; next, because we do not know whether she be chaste; lastly, because she is not chaste.

2.17. FUSCUS introduced this colour for the girl: the immortal gods wished to show their power in this girl, that it might appear how no human force can resist the divine: they thought nothing could be more of a marvel than freedom in a captive, chastity in a prostitute, innocence in a homicide. Latro said: some captive was more fortunate, none more brave. MARULLUS, when he had described how great the girl's dignity was, with her very face displaying something loftier and prouder, added this epigram, which Latro used to admire, or rather, as he himself said, to kiss with delight: let all relate, if you will, that they came to her as to a prostitute, provided they departed as from a priestess.

2.18. ALBUCIUS said: some man of fierce and violent spirit came — driven, I believe, by the gods themselves — to violate not the chastity of the future priestess, but to behold it. He told her beforehand to keep his hand from her sacred body: "There is no reason for you to dare to harm a chastity which men preserve and the gods await." And to him as he rushed to his own destruction she said: "See — here are arms which you know not how to use, for chastity," and, snatching his sword, she drove it into the breast of her pirate. That this deed of hers should not lie hidden was the care of those same immortal gods: an accuser was found to render in the forum testimony to her chastity. No one believed that a man had been killed by a woman, a young man by a girl, an armed man by an unarmed one: the thing seemed too great to be believed done without the help of the immortal gods.

2.19. CESTIUS feared to descend into the narrative, and ran past it thus: he said that these things ought above all to be valued in a priestess — chastity, innocence, good fortune. How chaste she is, the soldier showed; how innocent, the judge; how fortunate, her return. We have, too, a certain prior claim given to the priestess by the godhead itself: though they object that she was a captive, that she afterwards served a procurer, that at last she pleaded her case — amid so many perils the gods would not have kept her, had they not meant to keep her for themselves. ARGENTARIUS said this in the narrative: the accuser pressed the defendant hardest on this point — he said the man was killed while still within his words, before he offered violence.

2.20. SILO POMPEIUS narrated with this figure: I promise you a priestess whom no fortune can make unchaste. Slavery can compel some: she served both barbarians and pirates, and among them remained inviolate. The perverse habit of an age fallen into vice can corrupt some, with even matrons' great tutorship in lust: she will remain chaste. Set her in a brothel: even through this she has had the fortune to bring out her chastity untouched. She was in a base and shameful place; the procurer prostituted her, the people adored her: there was no one who did not contribute more to preserving her chastity than he had brought to violating it. Much, too, can an enemy, a sword, do to bend even the resolve of a chaste mind: she will not yield — nay, if need be, she will avenge her chastity. Do I seem to promise an incredible thing in a girl? She has already furnished it: a young man trying to defile the gift of a pitying people she repelled with the sword. There was one to accuse her of killing: she was acquitted. That there might be no room for doubt in you, whether she who was to come to the priesthood was pure, was intact — it has already been judged.

2.21. TRIARIUS said: the girl denied she had done it; she denied he had fallen by her own hands: a shape, she said, loftier than human seemed to tower around me and to lift girlish arms above a man's strength. Whoever you are, immortal gods, who willed that chastity should emerge with a marvel from that infamous place, you brought help to no ungrateful girl: to you she dedicates the chastity which she owes to you. The colour of the other side has no difficulty: it is plain from the epigrams I have set down. One must speak vehemently against the girl, not sordidly nor obscenely. Sordidly, as JULIUS BASSUS, who said: "this virgin from outside the gate," and "show that rusty hand of yours"; VIBIUS RUFUS, who said: "she still smells of the smoke of the arch." Obscenely, as the rhetor MURREDIUS, who said: "How do we know whether, with those who came, she struck a bargain for her virginity by some other kind of lust?"

2.22. This kind of thought I remember a certain ex-praetor uttering, when he was declaiming the controversia about the woman who brought an action against her husband for ill-usage, because she was a virgin, and won the case; afterwards she sought a priesthood. "We know," he said, "that restraint of husbands who, even if they spare timid virgins the first night, yet sport in the neighbouring regions." SCAURUS was listening to him — a man not only most eloquent but most charming, who never let any man's folly pass unpunished. At once came the Ovidian "foolish in her place," and the man broke down and said no more. This fault, Scaurus said, was derived from the Greek declaimers, who allowed themselves anything and obtained anything.

2.23. HYBREAS, he said, when he was delivering the controversia about the man who caught and killed two women in unnatural love, began to describe the husband's feeling, in which no shameful inquiry ought to be demanded: "I should first have looked at the man, to see whether he was born so, or was stitched together." GRANDAUS, an Asianic declaimer likewise, when he spoke on the same controversia — "Did I kill them, then, so as not to suffer them to be adulterers?" — said: "But what if I had caught a counterfeit-male adulterer?" In this controversia about the priestess MURREDIUS said, no less obscenely: "perhaps, while she repelled his lust, she caught it in her hands." One must keep far from all obscenity, both of words and of thoughts. Some things it is better to leave unsaid, to the harm of one's case, than to say, to the harm of one's modesty. VIBIUS RUFUS seemed to have spoken not amiss, using everyday words: "How much that priestess took from the soldier!"

3.1. THE LAW: An unchaste priestess shall be thrown from the rock. THE THEME: A certain priestess, condemned for unchastity, before she was thrown down, called upon Vesta. Cast from the rock, she lived. She is demanded back for punishment. — Was this what you expected — that, hanging her head, she would, before she was pushed, of her own modesty cast herself down? That was all that was wanting — that she should be more modest on the rock than she had been in the shrine. She stood, and casting her eyes round upon the crowd, began to violate that most holy godhead in the very punishment by which she was being avenged — as though she had violated it too little among the altars: this was a second act of incest in the condemned woman. She was condemned because she was unchaste, thrown down because she was condemned; she is to be demanded back because she is both unchaste and condemned — and was thrown down. Can it be doubted that she is to be thrown down again and again, until what she was thrown down for is brought about? She calls her ill fortune in perishing her defence. What shall I pray for you, importunate woman, but that you may not perish even when thrown down twice? Shall she come to tend the pledge of the Roman empire — unchaste, if not by debauchery, at least by the executioner's hand? "I called upon the gods," she says. Standing on that rock you named the gods, and do you wonder if they wish you thrown down a second time?

3.2. If nothing else, you stood in the place of the unchaste. THE NARRATIVE OF CESTIUS PIUS: What shall I do? Shall I set forth when she committed the unchastity, with whom, with what accomplices? These things, because I proved them, she was condemned. What was added afterwards that should make her a virgin? That she lay in prison, that she was led to the rock, that she was hurled from it? She says she is innocent, because she could not perish. So then — did the law mean that an unchaste priestess be examined in trial, but the judges in the punishment? Is the case adjourned by the judges into the penalty? She demands that, since her cause was not safe against the penalty, the penalty be safe against her cause. Do you not think the law took care that you should perish, which took care how you should perish? Shall we entreat you, woman, to be acquitted a second time? Either you violated the priesthood, or these men a priestess. You think ill of the gods, if they so late come to the aid of their own priestess. Sentence was passed; the verdict was pronounced; you were condemned: I ask about this place, woman, answer me:

3.3. are there gods? OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Let us try again: why do you fear the gods, when they are favourable? "It was," she says, "a sheer place, of measureless height, grim to behold." I told you: the law wished the unchaste woman to die. There stands a mass cut sheer into the deep, roughened by close-set rocks, which either dash the body to pieces or strike it more grievously down anew; the sides bristle with jutting crags: the place was chosen of all places that the condemned might oftener be thrown. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS: Cast down from above, not received below — a woman for whose punishment a rock must be built.

3.4. OF JULIUS BASSUS: I had thought nothing more could be added to her boldness than that on that cross she had named Vesta: but lo, rolled back from the very punishment all the way into the temple, she has polluted by her touch whatever is, after the gods, most holy; and she who may never return from the rock save to the rock — how much less may she rebound into the temple? Come rather to where she is condemned, than to where she is acquitted. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: If anyone still doubted about the woman thrown down, let him come and believe his own eyes. Is this a virgin's modesty? In so blessed a city, where so many maidens overflow, where there are so many daughters of leading men, she demands that, passing these by, you should of all women raise up from the underworld this one for your priestess. "Why then, if I am unchaste, do I live?" I do not know; this one thing I know: neither does what cannot be come to pass, nor is it a portent that can be. Far be the wickedness that that rock should acquit which receives the condemned alone. THE NARRATIVE OF ARGENTARIUS.

3.5. I had almost begun, judges, to narrate what kind of woman the defendant was; but what shall I accomplish, when I have proved her unchaste? Surely that she be seen as one to be thrown from the rock: she has already been seen so. I shall not imitate her shamelessness, so as to seem, by reopening a judgement already passed, to have condemned it. What was demanded, I proved; what you judged, I carry out. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: I call upon the gods and goddesses, whom in the former trial I did not call upon in vain, that the unchaste woman may perish as slowly as may be. "I called upon the divine powers," she says. What do you call upon, woman? If you are innocent, there are no gods. See how greatly the priestess has sinned, who could neither be acquitted nor die. Either you violated the priesthood, or we violated a priestess. You are mistaken, if you think it enough for the priesthood to be unable to die. OF ROMANIUS HISPO.

3.6. From the Tarpeian rock to Vesta, whose fillet the executioner tore; from the temple to the rock, from the rock to the temple: this is the running to and fro of the chaste priestess amid punishments and prayers. Tossed between the upper and the lower world, you have come back to life for a new punishment. THE NARRATIVE OF POMPEIUS SILO: As to the setting forth of the facts, judges, I will not, by words, delay the vengeance of the immortal gods. Let the unchaste woman be thrown from the rock. She was condemned by law: you have the judgement. She was thrown down: you have the precedent. THE NARRATIVE OF VIBIUS GALLUS: Brief is the setting forth of the facts: I charged my adversary with unchastity, accused her, condemned her, handed her over to the executioner: do you now permit the accuser to depart? Let us come back to your acquittal. Did the gods then prefer to acquit a condemned woman rather than a priestess? Too late, when condemned, did you crave innocence; when thrown down, life.

3.7. THE OTHER SIDE. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS: Condemned, she was thrown down; acquitted, she descended. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: You would think the girl was being let down, not falling. OF CESTIUS PIUS: She had no favour: she had lived in the temple; and so she called only on the gods. The law would not defer the priestess all the way to the rock, were it not awaiting the gods' verdict. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: He described the height of the mountain, dreadful even to those who look down without fear, and added: even the executioner, drawing back, gives a push. She did nothing like a defendant; her innocence is stubborn; she, a priestess, thought it base to beg of any but the gods. OF MARULLUS: Is it wonderful if a maiden was overwhelmed without favour? For whose knees did she clasp with her hands? Whom did she entreat, she who begged even the gods reluctantly? THE DIVISION. Latro divided into these questions:

3.8. whether the law concerns only the unchaste woman — that is, one who is thrown down and does not die; or also the condemned woman, who, if she has appeared innocent after condemnation, ought to be thrown down. Whether this woman is innocent; whether she was saved by the gods' help. CESTIUS subjoined these to this last question: whether the immortal gods take care of human affairs; even if they do, whether they care for individuals; if they care for individuals, whether they cared for this woman. He disapproved of ALBUCIUS, because he treated these not as particulars bearing on the question, but as philosophical problems. ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER divided thus: whether the penalty of the unchaste woman is to be thrown down, or to perish. Whether she was saved by the providence of the gods, or by chance; if she was saved by the will of the powers above, whether it was that she might perish more cruelly.

3.9. This colour is generally intermixed with the epigrams I have set down; yet I shall make known what Cestius thought. Certain men spoke against the priestess: that the gods seemed hostile to her, in keeping her alive for this — that she might be the longer tortured. Cestius said he preferred it to seem done by chance rather than by the gods' will; for if once we admit that they intervened in this matter, it will be the more plain that the priestess was saved as a reprieve, not for a punishment; and so he did not approve that saying of Triarius: "Do you think your punishment remitted? Your case has been adjourned." That very adjournment, he said, which is wont to be made before judges, from which the word in the epigram was taken, is not the mark of one condemning, but of one in doubt.

3.10. There had declaimed before him this very controversia VARUS QUINTILIUS — then Germanicus's son-in-law, and still wearing the toga praetexta. He, when he had described the indignation of the bystanders that the punishment was so quickly withdrawn from their eyes, said: the immortal gods heard the prayers of the public vow: they called the unchaste woman back, that the punishment might not run past too quickly. CESTIUS said many things insultingly against this epigram: "Just so," he said, "did they call her back as one calls back the racing chariots? For you set down the comparison before, since she too had come out of the carcer." When he had said much, at last he added a thing we all disapproved: "By such carelessness your father lost an army." He was rebuking the son, but reviled the father.

3.11. PASTOR AIETIUS delivered this controversia before Cestius, being already a senator, and thought this the best colour: by her poisonings her body has so hardened that it beats back the rocks. Cestius much rebuked him and said: "Is this why I should invite my hearers to go and hear others? He does me as much harm who is either an athlete or a consumptive." And he was speaking against Albucius, who in those days had said in this controversia: "harder than the rock," and against Julius Bassus much, who had said: "a virgin from under the rock." Junius Otho the father I remember introducing a foolish colour — the less to be borne because he published books of colours: "Perhaps," he said, "she prepared herself for the punishment, and from the time she began to sin

3.12. has learned how to fall." SILO POMPEIUS attempted this colour: "There is a certain modesty shown even to condemned priestesses: we blushed to take anything from a condemned woman's garment." HISPANUS said: "So you had thought you could be quit with one punishment, when on the rock you had named the gods?" TRIARIUS, when he had described the voices of the indignant, added: "What? Can you not die twice?" MARULLUS said: "She stood on the rock, she called on the gods; the public indignation arose: does she dare to name the gods, dare it in this place? And what has she now to beg of them, but a good death?" DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS said: "Once, and a second, and a third time, and until you fall down to where you were cast."

4.1. THE LAW: A son shall be in the father's power. Whoever catches an adulterer with the adulteress may kill them both, provided he kills both bodies. THE THEME: A brave man in war lost his hands. He caught his wife in adultery, and called his son to kill them; the son refused. The adulterers escaped. He disinherits his son. OF PORCIUS LATRO: I only roused my adulterers. Wretched me! How long did they lie there after I had caught them? Shall I not disinherit you, whom I might kill? O bitter remembrance of my own valour! O grievous memory of my victory! That military man, but now laden with the spoils of the enemy, did no more than curse his adulterers: I alone of all husbands neither dismissed the adulterers nor killed them. Why do you laugh? I say I have hands. I called my son. You, the son of a brave man, who cannot draw a sword? Not even a trunk could I have been taken, save at home; yet such as I could, I struggled, and set my mutilated body against them. The adulterers went out stained only with my blood. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: O me, worthy either of a chaste wife, or of an unchaste one only while I am armed! You I call upon, my country, you who possess my hands. Who would not suppose either that I had no son, or that the son had no hands?

4.2. OF CESTIUS PIUS: This man was conceived — by whom, we shall know when I have caught my adulterers. I never thought it would come to pass, while the republic stood, that a brave man should feel he had lost his hands. OF MARULLUS: I escorted my adulterers right to the threshold. I ran, wretch that I was, to the sword, as though I had hands. OF TRIARIUS: My arms fell with my hands: then for the first time I felt that I had lost my hands. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE BRAVE MAN FIGHTING. Good gods, and did anyone mock these hands too? OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS: Summoned to kill the adulterers, he came to dismiss them. So have I lost my hands even for adulterers' sake? I stood mocked by my own adulterers; the deserter of his father, the procurer of his mother, who, I think, you now believe is no son of a brave man — a third man, the mocker, stood in the bedchamber.

4.3. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS: In war he lost his own hands, at home even his son's. This one man of all went forth to war as the substitute for his young son: in the battle-line he conquered, at home he was taken captive. He watches the adulterers wallowing amid the spoils of the brave man. "Young man, the time of your service is come." A shameful thing: he was deceived; as vainly did he run to his son as to his sword. The adulterers laughed at the brave man's mutilated hands, slipping down about his own arms. OF ARGENTARIUS: He did not come into the war, and refused his hands to his country before he refused them to his father. Gladly I have taken up his cause: for who would not avenge him? What is more unhappy than this — a man whom the adulterers laughed at, just when they ought to die? Shall a brave man, a trunk, behold in the city adulterers whole and sound?

4.4. OF JULIUS BASSUS: There is no reason for you to think he is being punished: he is sent back to his own; sent back, I say, to his mother — perhaps to his father too. He has earned the inheritance of the man whom he thought it kin-murder to kill. To no man did you ever owe more than to this brave man: so far did he fight for you, that he could not fight for himself. Young man, follow those you dismissed.

4.5. THE OTHER SIDE. OF VIBIUS GALLUS: "You did not kill," he says, "your mother." Whom should I have been less bound to destroy by this crime than my father? My father ordered me to kill: the law forbids. I would not have set the law against my father, had not that law been on his side. I thought it the other kin-murder, to kill my mother before my father's eyes. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: O wretched piety, amid what a conflict of a parent's wishes did you stand! Not always are crimes within our right, and merciful nature unstrings even savage minds.

4.6. THE DIVISION. Latro used this division: whether it was lawful for the son to take vengeance then; whether it was fitting; whether, if it was lawful and fitting, he is to be pardoned if he could not, his natural affection resisting. Whether it was lawful he divided thus: whether a son may avenge adultery when the husband is not present; whether he may when the husband is in that place as though he were not present at all. Whether it was fitting is a matter of treatment, which each man varies as he pleases; yet Latro arranged it thus: it was fitting, even had the father not ordered it, to kill the unchaste wife of a brave man; it was fitting, the father ordering it, even if he himself could have killed her; it was fitting, when the father both ordered it and could not himself do it. The modern declaimers attempted that question born of the law's word — "Whoever catches an adulterer with the adulteress, provided he kills both bodies, shall be free of penalty": whether no one can kill but the one who catches them; they attempted also this: whether a son can be disinherited for what his own law made lawful for him to do.

4.7. The colour for the young man introduced by all who declaimed was one: "I could not kill" — drawn from that saying of Cicero's which he uttered in a like controversia, when a man was being disinherited who had received his unchaste mother to be killed and had let her go: "thrice not . . ." Latro described the stupor of his whole body at the spectacle of so unlooked-for an outrage, and said: "Father, your hands failed you, all of me failed me." And when he had described the darkness of his eyes, the swooning of his mind, the numbness of all his limbs, he added: "before I came back to myself, they went out." GORGIAS with a clumsy colour, but a sweet one; PAMMENES, of the new declaimers —

4.8. — said . . . GORGIAS said excellently . . . PAMMENES said . . . ARELLIUS FUSCUS said: greater was the crime you commanded than the one you had caught. ALBUCIUS did not narrate, but pleaded with this colour from beginning to end: ought I to defend myself? If anything is charged against me, I shall either deny it or excuse it. If you demand of me something beyond my strength, I shall say: pardon me, I cannot. A father pardons a son who refuses a voyage, if he cannot bear the sea; he pardons one who does not follow the camp, if he cannot, though the father himself be a military man. I cannot kill. Come now, recite the law itself: "let it be lawful for the husband, lawful for the father, lawful for the son." Why does it name so many, unless it thinks that some are unable? And in his description he said: when my father called me, "this," I said, "he thinks will be a punishment graver than death — if he shows the adulteress to her son." And he said this too: the adulterers went out between the maimed father and the stupefied son. SILO narrated with this colour: I did not think it lawful for me.

4.9. BLANDUS with this colour: from both sides I hear the name of son; my father asks a juster thing, my mother an easier. And this he added after the description: I will confess to you — I could not commit kin-murder before my father's eyes. CESTIUS pleaded with this colour: "my mother sprang forth at once," he said, "and bound my hands with her embrace. I give thanks to my confusion, that I saw nothing in that bedchamber but my mother and my father: my father begged me to kill, my mother to let her live; my father, that the guilty woman should not go unpunished, my mother, that I, the innocent, should remain so; my father recited the law on adulteries, my mother the law on kin-murder." And he gave this last epigram: if it is base not to have wished to kill my mother, I could not. ARGENTARIUS said: there is no reason for you to judge me by this present condition, that I have hands: then I had none. And he said this: she pays you the penalty — she has lost her husband, lost her son; I will not sit by her when she is sick, I will not maintain her when she is in want; all things are free for me — I no longer owe her my life.

4.10. On the other side many things were most beautifully said; yet I am not sure our men will yield to the Greeks. In this controversia DAMAS said . . . This epigram has something corrupt about it. Latro said: how greatly did I then complain of my fortune, that I had not lost my eyes too! SILO POMPEIUS said: son, either tear out my eyes or lend me your hands. All said something pretty at that point where the adulterers were caught and dismissed. Latro said: I only roused my adulterers. ARELLIUS FUSCUS rather frigidly said the opposite epigram: I did not even rouse the adulterers by my coming in. VIBIUS RUFUS said: the adulterers did not rise for the husband. POMPEIUS said: young man, come, rouse the adulterers at last; since you came, they lie the more at ease. Latro said: you are mistaken who think I have no hands. I called my son: when he entered, he was greeted by the adulterer.

4.11. FUSCUS said: son, your loyalty! Show that I have not lost my hands, while you are whole. The adulterer makes a controversia of you against me: come, and declare whose son you are. PUBLIUS VINICIUS both spoke prettily and not novelly — he took from everyone what was well said: I burst into the adulterers' bedchamber: why do I lie, wretch that I am? With the bedchamber open the adulterers were waiting. CESTIUS said: I called my son; the adulterer laughed, as though to say: he is mine. VIBIUS RUFUS said: my adulterer went out at his own convenience. HYBREAS expressed this thought excellently . . . DIONYSIUS, the son of that Dionysius who taught Cicero's son — a declaimer more elegant than vehement — expressed this thought both vehemently and elegantly . . . VIBIUS RUFUS said:

4.12. how at their leisure, how at their ease the adulterers passed before my eyes, before my son's hands! Latro, when he had described the adulterers going out, added: young man, follow your parents. NICETES that most beautiful epigram, in which I am not sure he did not surpass our men . . . But that saying of ALBUCIUS surely outdoes the Greeks: when he had described himself fighting in the battle-line, he said: wretched me, what hands the adulterer escaped! And this of Albucius's: "I could not," he said, "kill my mother." That you may be the more excusable, add "and my father." Albucius narrated as though the adultery were done with the son's knowledge; he made him suspect as though privy to it for his mother. PUBLIUS ASPRENAS said: the husband went out last, and gave place to his own adulterers. The same man said: you cannot kill your mother? At least you will kill the adulterer. Or is he too a father? NICETES had said . . . MURREDIUS, while wishing to imitate this epigram, said something most foolish: I left my fighting hands in the battle-line.

5.1. THE LAW: A ravished woman may choose either the death of her ravisher, or marriage to him without dowry. THE THEME: A man on one night ravished two women. One demands his death, the other marriage. — He was already preparing himself for a third, had not the night failed. He is accused of outrage, and defends an outrage; with one of the ravished women he goes to law, and the other he summons as advocate. Avenge it, fathers; avenge it, brothers; avenge it, husbands; let the severity of public discipline rise up, the stronger: now they are ravished in pairs. OF MENTO: On the next day there was weeping in this woman's house, the lamentation of a mother bewailing her hopes, when meanwhile from another house arose another outcry, another uproar. The people gathered, as if struck by some public terror; they could scarcely believe there were only two ravishers, when meanwhile the public enemy of chastity was brought forth, whom one night, with the wrong of one maiden, had not wearied. OF CESTIUS PIUS: One woman he ravished by wrong, the other he ravishes by patronage. As far as I suspect, you were not even ravished. Do you ask the proof? You are not angry. How comes this about? He wronged two, and only one complains. "I am compassionate," she says. Rejoice; you have one to avenge you. See what a husband you are to have: he is not content with one. ARGENTARIUS expressed the same thought with this addition: he is not content with one — no, not with one night.

5.2. OF POMPEIUS SILO: But how well he played the mime — how she bewailed herself as ravished, with what an outcry! How nearly we yielded her the choice! OF TRIARIUS: You would have perished, ravisher, had you not deserved to perish twice. OF JUNIUS GALLIO: Let the punishment be exacted of him, let it be set up in the public view, let him be flogged long, let him perish a whole day who sinned a whole night. Suddenly the disdainful ravisher steps up and says: "Now I do not even want the marriage." Foolish woman, you are deceived; shall I tell you what he said to you? For he said the same to her too: "While I was seeking you, I fell upon that one." OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Let rivers flow backward, let the sun lead the sphere on a contrary course, let the sacrilegious man flee to the altars: the ravished woman avenges the ravisher.

5.3. THE OTHER SIDE. OF POMPEIUS SILO: On the next day, when his night's mistake had been told him, while he thought he had fallen upon one woman, he stretched out suppliant hands to this first one, entreated her first, and won her over: for this reason, I think, she is the more angry with the ravisher. Of the two girls, the one wishes the ravisher to die, the other to be saved: the one judge condemns the defendant, the other acquits him; when the votes are equal, let the milder prevail. I will say what I think: she would be the more angry if he had ravished one only; she would say, "So then, was I alone thought worthy to be wronged by him?" OF ARGENTARIUS: Cite now Verginia, cite Lucretia: yet the Sabine women are more. Of the tribunes, the more powerful is the one who interposes his veto. That power is not hateful which conquers by mercy. Why do you delay, girl? Beg for your husband. This epigram was laughed at by Cestius as improper.

5.4. THE DIVISION. In this controversia, on the first question no one agreed with another. Latro made this the first question: that a ravisher who has been ordered to die by the woman he ravished cannot be saved . . . "If," he said, "he must go as an envoy, he will perish; if he must do military service, he will perish; if he must lead by law, likewise he will perish; if he must marry the ravished woman, he will equally perish. If he had ravished you first, and you had chosen marriage, and then, after an interval, before you married, he had violated this other woman, would you deny that he ought to die at the ravished woman's bidding? And yet there is no difference, except that the ravisher is the more deserving of death, between whose two ravishments not even one night intervenes. If you had married the ravished man, and then, after the third day, he had ravished another, would you deny that he ought to die? And yet what difference is there, except that you would then defend a husband more honourably than now you defend a ravisher?"

5.5. He made a second: whether the ravished woman who chooses marriage can grant the ravisher nothing more than that he not perish by her own law, while she has no right against another's law. You chose marriage: he will not be killed as your ravisher. But the same man, on the very night on which he ravished you, if he deserted his post, will be beaten with the cudgel; if he committed sacrilege, will be killed. Though you say, "What then? Shall I not marry?" — you grant the ravisher this, that you yourself do not kill him; you cannot grant that no one kills him. As a sacrilegious man, though saved by you, would perish, so the other girl's ravisher, though saved by you, will perish. If he had ravished you, and then, caught in adultery, were kept under guard to die more lingeringly, and you meanwhile, brought forth, had chosen marriage — for the choice is given even for an absent man — would you forbid him to be killed by the husband? What difference does it make by what law he perishes, except that you would more modestly interfere with another's law than with your own?

5.6. He made a third: since what each woman chooses cannot both come to pass, whether that choice is to be preferred by which vengeance reaches both. The one who chooses death says: my choice avenges both you and me; yours does not avenge me; nor does my choice grant me what it grants you — the odium of a slain ravisher. The other answers: your choice does not avenge me. Do you call it my vengeance, that what I wish does not come to pass, and what I do not wish does? It will even be an insult to me, that you should be thought worthy to have a man killed in your honour, and I not worthy to have one saved in mine. In that way my choice avenges you too: surely the law wrote two penalties for the ravisher; one he will suffer; you will not go unavenged, for the ravisher will not go unpunished: he will have a punishment — a dowerless wife. She answers: not in the same way: he will die, but for both; he will be saved, but not for me. There he made a fourth question: if both choices cannot stand, which is the worthier. A last point, not a question but a treatment: that every ravisher would go unpunished, if this path of impunity were shown — that he who had ravished more women would be the safer; that everyone would find some lowly woman to lend herself to the choice.

5.7. ARELLIUS FUSCUS made this the first question: whether one who has ravished two women must in any case die. The law, he said, which says, "Let the ravished woman choose either the death or the marriage of her ravisher," speaks of those who have ravished single women; it did not suppose anyone would ravish two on one night. I do not ask what you choose; what you can most severely choose, I forestall. The ravisher must die. Why? To each ravished woman vengeance is owed. You cannot marry both; you can die for both. One part of the law applies to this ravisher, in which there is death. Suppose both had chosen marriage: what would happen? There would be a contest for marriage to the ravisher. Suppose he had ravished more than two: what would come of it? One would marry. The marriage would belong to one, the death to all. He who has ravished two owes death to both. Why? I will tell you. Let him choose what he wishes: if they choose either both marriage, or one death and the other marriage, what both women wish cannot come to pass; in one way only can what both wish come to pass — if both choose death: therefore let that be done by which alone the two can be avenged. Here he treated:

5.8. that it is not even a useful precedent that one who has ravished two should not in any case perish; that by this reasoning a most pernicious custom would be introduced into the state — that a man should not perish for this reason, that he deserved to perish more often. The remaining part of the controversia Fuscus divided into these: which choice is the more honourable, which the juster, which the more useful. CESTIUS divided this part of the controversia thus: which choice of the woman is the worthier to prevail; in which choice the ravisher is the more worthy to be placed. Cestius also attempted a conjectural question: whether this woman had colluded with the ravisher and been ravished for this purpose, to be set against the other.

5.9. Latro said that not everything which can be scattered as suspicion should also be indicated; that this was a colour, not a question; that a question is one which can be filled out with arguments. Cestius said that this too could be filled out with arguments. This thought, bandied about by the Latins, NICETES expressed: "the third night failed him." GLYCON said . . . Diocles of Carystus said . . . This thought VIBIUS RUFUS expressed subtly: I wish to make you ill-disposed toward your betrothed — he has a mistress. In this controversia ALBUCIUS said: "let him walk among males." So true is it that no vice is without its lover, that some thought this a witty thing; yet I marvel more that Albucius could say it than that any could praise it. Of the Latins, TRIARIUS said: I congratulate you, maidens, that the day broke sooner. ARGENTARIUS said: do you ask what put an end to his ravishing? The daylight. Latro: he was already preparing himself for a third, had not the night failed.

6.1. THE LAW: [implied in the theme]. THE THEME: A young man, captured by pirates, wrote to his father about his ransom. The father did not ransom him. The archpirate's daughter compelled him to swear that he would marry her if he were released, and he swore. Leaving her father, she followed the young man. He returned to his father and married her. An orphaned heiress comes forward; the father bids his son put away the archpirate's daughter and marry the heiress; when the son refuses, he disinherits him. OF PORCIUS LATRO: Good gods — and was this girl too received in my father's hospitality? I forbid her my house — a woman to be forbidden the earth. A wife of fine promise, a daughter-in-law of fine promise, who can love a captive and hate even a father. "Captured," he says, "I lay in darkness." Tell, I beg, your father-in-law's kindnesses. Can I, judges, be at ease? My son says he owes his wife the murder of his father. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Who was present at your wedding? Her father? Then — the girl's father?

6.2. THE OTHER SIDE. OF JULIUS BASSUS: Today I should be a captive, had this woman not been the archpirate's daughter. When I said, "I have a father," I was set apart among the good captives. She is called the archpirate's daughter — born, I suppose, of some captive woman; certainly her nature had drawn her mind away from her father: she was merciful, she would entreat, she wept, she was moved by everyone's perils; nothing of the pirate could be found in her. I promised marriage, and, as a kind of sacred testimony, I inserted your name. In that place she did not desert me, into which even fathers feared to come. Fortune bound us more closely than that, orphaned, she could tear us apart. You should have seen my body covered with rags, all my limbs pressed with bonds, my eyes drawn back inward with leanness, my hands worn by chains and useless: who could love such a man but a merciful woman?

6.3. I deceived you, girl; I promised you other things: you shall come into my homeland with me, there I will requite you; here, chained, needy, squalid, what can I do? My father, your father-in-law — for so he already long since called you — your father-in-law, I say, will requite you. Some men have buried with their disgraces the images of grandfathers and fathers; some, born ignoble, have made a lineage for their descendants: in the former, not to have kept what they received is the greatest dishonour; in the latter, to have made what no one had given is praiseworthy. If men could make for themselves their lot of birth, no one would be lowly, no one needy; each would seize a fortunate house; but since we are not gods, nature rules us and sends upon each whatever chance she will.

6.4. From this we are to be judged — when we are our own. What was Marius, if we look at him by his ancestors? In his seven consulships he has nothing more illustrious than that he was his own founder. If hereditary images had raised up Pompey, no one would have called him "the Great." Rome bore Servius for her king, in whose virtues nothing is more illustrious than the lowness of his name. What do those men seem to you, called from the plough, who by their poverty made the republic blessed? Turn over whatever man you will as noble: you will come to lowliness. Why do I recount men one by one, when I can show you this city? . . . Bare stood the hills, and amid walls so widely spread nothing is nobler than a lowly cottage: gleaming above its gabled roofs with pure gold, the Capitol shines forth. Can you reproach the Romans that, when they might hide their lowliness, they display it, and think these things not great unless it appear that they have risen from small beginnings?

6.5. One ought to pity her because she is an orphan. And yet she has kinsmen, she has her father's friends, she has you, the bravest guardian of her weakness. All rich wives demand servitude: believe me, she will want to reign over her own riches; and yet it is fair that I possess the house which has acknowledged me. If we should begin to be freer, if a somewhat finer house should gleam upon her fancy, if we should treat her a little less fawningly, she will leave us: and then it is a torment to lack riches, when once you have felt them. You see the difference between two wives: this one, if she leaves us, will reclaim her own; the other, dismissed, will not carry off what she gave. Many have married women without dowry; some have not accepted dowries even when named; some have been content even with bought slaves, and, when they might have accepted riches, have preferred to buy those to whom they might give freedom, rather than to sell their own.

6.6. A young man is sought for adoption: if he is willing to go, let him inquire what kind of ancestors that old man who seeks him has, and how many, how great his goods, whether he can pledge himself for a price great enough. Someone wishes to capture childless old men, and to spread his hopes over others' deaths: let him scrutinize their wills, examine their fortunes; but when he seeks a wife, let him see whether she loves her marriage, whether she values nothing more than her husband, whether she is merciful, whether she is brave, whether she can, if anything befall her husband, bear ills together with him: if she has been furnished with these two goods, she is dowered. We cannot be happy together: as we are wont, we shall be unhappy together. "Do," she says, "what he commands; I do not wish you to offend your father on my account. I will go alone." You will go? Where, unhappy woman? What regions will you seek? Is there any place for you? Your father has shut the seas against us, mine the lands.

6.7. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Those who are compelled by their fathers to take wives are wont to say, "We are not yet fit for marriage": I, on the contrary, shun a wife because I am too fond of my wife. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: An unruly evil is a rich wife. When the orphan has brought an immense weight of gold, when her money has loaded our coffers, what else shall we be but blessed slaves? The one gives you a son, the other a patrimony: father, which is the richer? She whom you would join to me is wealthy, father: O if you knew how rich this woman too once was! "She is an orphan," he says: and this woman too is an orphan; of the two orphans, the one is more to be cared for by me than the one whom I made an orphan.

6.8. THE DIVISION. In this controversia there was no dispute: nearly all agree. LATRO made this the first question: whether a father can disinherit a son on account of marriage, when the choice in this matter is free to each man. GALLIO subjoined this: even if he can order a son to take a wife, can he order one who already has one? Latro made a second: if the father has the right to disinherit even on account of marriage, whether this son was not free to obey, since he had sworn. This he divided into these: whether no one is bound by an oath to which he was driven by necessity; whether he fulfilled the oath by marrying her; whether, even if he did not fulfil it, one is not bound by the obligation who, under compulsion, does something against an oath — and that this man was compelled by his father. If, by reason of the oath, he can obey his father, whether he ought to. Here come the girl's deserts and character. With this colour Latro used for the father:

6.9. that the girl was moved not by mercy but by lust, and therefore it was no kindness. In his arguments he treated this part elegantly: even if she had done a kindness, gratitude was not to be returned in this way; further, that a kindness is what is given by judgement, not what is given by frenzy or sickness. HISPO ROMANIUS said with another colour that she had followed not from love of the young man but from hatred of her father; he wished to strip from her even the recommendation of love. BUTEO used a far-fetched colour; for he wished it to seem that all this was done not against the father's will, but with his secret persuasion while he openly dissembled; that this honourable match was devised by the father, since in no other way was it possible; for they could not otherwise have escaped, save with the father conniving.

6.10. But Latro said it was not worth so much to strip from the freed young man his recommendation, as to strip from the abandoned father his odium. ARELLIUS FUSCUS declaimed excellently; for he ordered her to be put away not on account of marriage to the heiress, but to be cast out even if there were no heiress. He said not that the other woman pleased him more, but that this one displeased him; and this, which Latro had run past, he pressed: that he feared the girl, rash, born among pirates, reared among pirates, undutiful toward her father. GALLIO said what all the schoolmen had passed over: that he feared she might be a spy and might disclose to pirates all their opportunities — or at least might seem to; that he did not wish to be an object of suspicion to the republic. JULIUS BASSUS feared that the girl might seem to have improperly exacted the oath; lest the young man should have any freedom, he added that he had sworn by his father.

6.11. TRIARIUS, while catching at a manly epigram, said foolishly that he had sworn even by the orphan. For Cestius said it was a poor thing to abandon her now as an orphan, if he had even sworn by her. Latro said that to swear by the father too was foolish; for nothing is less fitting than that a man should swear by his father, when he is about to abandon her father. All gave the girl an honourable mother, all said with what mercy she had departed, moved by it, with what love. Pollio alone wishes her to have done it by judgement: for he said she could not live with pirates; that as soon as she found an honourable occasion of departing, she departed.

6.12. QUINTUS HATERIUS, on the father's side, raised a most beautiful image: for he began suddenly, in that rush of speech he was wont to use, to describe — as though he heard some uproar — all things laid waste and plundered, country houses burning with fires, the flights of country folk; and when he had filled everything with terror, he added: why have you shuddered, young man? Your father-in-law is come. The epigram of GLYCON is very slight and Greek: "Consume your own begetter: we have a father." He made tolerable that thing, when he described the force of an oath: that it is what sanctions treaties, by which armies are bound: "An oath is a bond, and even among pirates a sure pledge." ARTEMON dwelt upon the same thought, on the young man's side; when he had said his father was abandoned, he added: "Revile now the archpirate, the murderer, the temple-robber: add, if you will, the perjurer too."

7.1. THE LAW: Children shall maintain their parents, or be bound. THE THEME: A man had three sons — one brave, one a tyrant, one an adulterer. The brave son was captured by pirates, and wrote to his father about his ransom. The father wrote to the pirates that he would give double the sum, if they cut off the son's hands. The pirates released him. He came home, killed the tyrant, killed the adulterer, and being now poor, his father seeks maintenance from him; he refuses. — Give me the letter of this hungering man. "Let his hands," he says, "be cut off." Upon whatever part of my body let his cruelty rather rush: the rest of my limbs are my own, my hands are the republic's. Do I, perhaps, ask the reward of a tyrant-slayer? Send me away such as you received me from the pirates. I have no cause to complain of fortune: behold the man who [betrayed?] my hands . . . flees for refuge. "If you cut off," he says, "his hands." If you are angry, write rather: if you kill him. As a tyrant-slayer I ask the tyrant's end. I do not fear that judges will bind the hands which the pirates loosed.

7.2. Of all the ills that fortune, by land and sea, has heaped upon me, both privately and publicly — tyrant and adulterer and pirates — I have experienced nothing harder than my father: the tyrant, though he feared my hands, did not cut them off; the wrong of my marriage took nothing from my body; the pirates, as though they lived by my favour, pitied me for nothing; one enemy alone I had who was inexorable. O happy republic, that, with my enemy removed, I did not sail before the tyrant was slain! "I begot you," he says, "I reared you": surely you rendered that service to the tyrant too, and to the adulterer. If you cannot ransom these hands through yourself, appeal to the republic. The adulterer was buried with his hands, the tyrant cast out with his. By great crimes the laws of nature perish: you are no more my father than those were my brothers. Hear a new word from a captive: I am safe, if my father has nothing. "Whatever you have, send for the ransom of your son": there is no reason for you to fear: you will not lack maintenance, when you have said you are the father of a tyrant-slayer;

7.3. you begged for an adulterer son. Seek now how tyrants are made. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Give me my father's letters. You ask whence I have them, when you sent me none? "I will give double the money": it is plain — he is begging for an only son. "I will give double money": one sum for the son, the other for the tyrant-slayer. "If you cut off his hands": this is not lawful even with adulterers. "I had no money." But you can ask those men — and ask boldly: I fell among merciful pirates. Why do I not maintain him? Because, though my son was captured — it is surely too little if I say you did not ransom me — I cannot maintain him: I have lost my hands. Do you not believe it? Read the letters. You were giving double money — to the greedy you were giving it, to pirates you were giving it: so the pirates themselves excused themselves, when they cut off my hands: "your father ordered it," they said; "it is a great deed, but for a great price it is allowed."

7.4. "I am needy," he says: you lie. Give me my father's property-list. "What then? Will you maintain a poor man?" Once released, perhaps I shall promise, when you ask: I make no bargain. Even now you seek my hands? Deny that the letter is yours, and you have an argument; say: I too am wont to beg even for an adulterer. "Whoever has not maintained his father," he says, "let him be bound": I feared more for my hands. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: What my father begged of me I do not know: by public vengeance I drove a bloody sword into a private tyrant. The pirates, when they had captured me, did nothing more than bind me. "I will give double money." What? Do you promise more than is asked? Whence have you such resources of patrimony? Even now do you speak as though from the tyrant's coffer? My brother corrupted my wife, whom not even the tyrant had violated. When the pirates fixed a price, I rejoiced, for my wealthy father could pay even if they had demanded double. They sent me back to the republic with my hands, to my father with his letters. OF POMPEIUS SILO.

7.5. I bargained for my ransom, I wrote to my father. Whoever of you hung in suspense for your tyrant-slayer, I am sure, anxiously prayed that this letter might reach my father. "I am in want," he says. So suddenly? What ought not to be bought at all, he bought at double. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: I won my cause before those who owed nothing to my hands. Only then does this man complain of being in want, when he saw my hands. What wonder if the pirates did not think it base to take the wage a father gave? Be present, natural affection; if I have lived holily, if innocently, bring it about that this man, who hates my hands, may miss them. The letter seemed to me slowly loosed. This, surely, was wanting to an age filled full of our crimes, that someone should be told of as loosed by pirates, bound by his father.

7.6. OF BLANDUS: This man, who has not the means to live, how dearly does he sell your tyrant-slayers! What do you say, pirate of your own son, schoolmaster of pirates, buyer of a cruelty of which not even a pirate is the seller? OF ROMANIUS HISPO: "The father greets the pirates": this greeting you snatch from your son. "I will give double": what need? I could have been loosed more cheaply. "that you cut off his hands": the pirates were astounded, and as they let me go, said: "tell your father that pirates do not sell everything." OF MENTO: Until now, judges, I have pleaded as though for my own hands; but the truth must be confessed: they have been given back to you. I exhibit, republic, the pirates' deposit to you: these your hands have been brought back safe to you. Do what you will. This one thing I ask: if they have sinned, hand them over to anyone to be bound: if you hand them to this man, he will bind them as he loosed them: he will cut them off.

7.7. OF ALFIUS FLAVUS: As yet I know not what kind of father to wish for. A rich one? He maims. A poor one? He binds. Neither is good for my hands. "I will give double, that you cut off his hands." You had a son less cruel. OF MARULLUS: When the letter was brought, the pirates already began to loose me; when the double money in the letter was read out, "this," I said, "is the father I had praised to you." OF TRIARIUS: Where is that patrimony of yours which equips tyrants, which makes adulterers? Where is it? Certainly on me you spent nothing.

7.8. THE OTHER SIDE. OF JULIUS BASSUS: Even my victory will be unhappy: if I do not win my cause, I shall die of hunger; if I win it, I shall achieve only this — not to die of hunger. I married too fruitful a wife: she bore me three I know not what monsters, raging in various ways against each other and against me, judges: one able to crush his country, one to violate his brother, one his father. I call all my fellow-citizens to witness, judges: we served together; no one felt the tyranny more than I alone. I have the greatest proof — that I live: you would not have spared me, had you thought me a part of the tyrant. While they fought among themselves, the republic won. The remaining two, since they could not against us, exercised their tyranny upon each other. This one had some wife or other, whom he had got to know in the citadel. If I could bind you, I would have bound you when you set out.

7.9. You have no need of great expense to support your father: share with me your own maintenance. I do not wish you to maintain me as well as I maintained you; I do not wish you to pardon me: whatever you suffered, whatever you feared, I will suffer; demand the lash, tear at my wrinkles. Were you burned? Set fires beneath, and this half-dead face, which breathes only for its own reproach because it cannot be put out, burn away. If that is too little, do what you say not even the pirates did: cut off my hands. I exhibit them to you: these are the ones that write whatever they please. Where is your sword? Draw it. The tyrant was allowed to die by a wound; the adulterer was quickly dispatched with one blow: I, your father, ask as a kindness a like fate. Not even among the pirates did you fear hunger. No tyrant tortured anyone so.

7.10. OF PORCIUS LATRO: Son, I beg nothing more than to be spared hunger; yet if you are inexorable, this I ask as a kindness: that I may die either as an adulterer or as a tyrant. The fortune of us both was equal at that time: you were bound, I in old age was immobile and most like one bound; you in solitude, I in the solitude of all my own; you did not see the light, I even hated it. This one thing is between us, that you received food even from the pirates. OF BLANDUS: I was pleading not for an adulterer but for my house, that he might not kill his brother, defile a tyrant-slayer, bespatter a father. As I begged, and interposed these very hands, he all but cut them off. This epigram was laughed at by Latro as childish: this much was provided for it, that he might seem to have left someone of his own whom he did not kill. OF VIBIUS RUFUS: These, surely, are the hands that wrote the letter: I offer them; cut them off and maintain me. OF POMPEIUS SILO: "Let children maintain their parents, or be bound." To you I transfer my own law:

7.11. you may bind me, but maintain me. THE DIVISION. Generally they used this division: whether the law weighs the case neither of father nor of son, but that every father is to be maintained by his son — He said that this law was written for bad fathers; good ones are maintained even without a law. If not all are to be maintained, whether this man is to be maintained. This question Latro divided into these: whether he is to be maintained, since he did not ransom his son from the pirates. Here he asked whether he could not have ransomed him, or would not; then, whether he is to be maintained even though he wished his son's hands cut off;

7.12. lastly, whether he wished them cut off. HISPO ROMANIUS made this separately, as a question of law: whether one who has not ransomed his son cannot seek maintenance from him. But, as GALLIO said, both questions contain this, and the first too, in which it is asked whether every father is to be maintained; for it is said: what if a man has blinded his son? What if a man has not ransomed him? And when one comes to the other question, in which it is asked whether this father is to be maintained, nothing else can be said why he should not be maintained, but that he did not ransom him, that he promised double for his hands to be cut off. The Greeks' improper question it will be enough, in such controversiae, to note once or twice: whether a father may use this law against a tyrant-slayer, as though his hands were sacred and public, against which not even the pirates think anything is permitted to them. Our men have removed this kind of question.

7.13. SILO POMPEIUS used not only the points the rest used, when he said this father ought not to be maintained because he had not ransomed his son and because he had wished his son's hands cut off, but he passed from the private causes to the public cause; for he said that a man pernicious to the republic ought not to be maintained — one who had had a tyrant for a son, who had not killed him, who longed for him when lost, who would avenge him; and he denied that this man had any other cause of pursuing the tyrant-slayer save public liberty, and he described the character of the man as impious, bloody, who, because he could not through his children, exercised tyranny through pirates: and, that he might say this the more freely, he gave the son an advocate. And this in this part was praised, while Silo declaimed: he had begun to treat this — that a tyrant's father ought not to be maintained; with all favouring him, that he should be starved to death; and when he had long pressed that he was a tyrant's father, he added: dare to demand that this profit you, that you are a tyrant-slayer's father. BLANDUS, when he declaimed this thought the next day, turned it into irony, and, when he had objected that he was a tyrant's father, added: do not turn from him;

7.14. he has something to set against it: he is an adulterer's father too. The colour for the father one man and another introduced differently. FUSCUS confessed he had been angry with him for killing his brother before his father's eyes, and pressed this point vehemently, since no tyrant, no pirate, had done this. "I was angry," he said, "for this very reason, that by this crime you had defiled even your tyrant-slaying; it is plain that you rage against your own by a kind of disease." And he kept this tenor of pleading: "I was angry, and to this day I am angry, nor do I complain." Nor did he stoop to entreaties or beg, but used a father's right. This he added, to excuse the cruelty of the letter: I wrote to the pirates not with the intent that your hands be cut off, but to reproach you with your bloody hands, stained with a brother's blood before your father's eyes. And I wrote in safety; for I knew the pirates would not do it unless they had received money, which I would not send: and so they did not cut them off; and had they hoped for it, they certainly would have. But it was plain that those letters were the letters of an angry man, not of one promising. At the end he described how wretched he would be, taking maintenance from those hands which a little before he had watched killing his brother, and added — what he said his teacher delivered to the highest applause — that line of Homer suited to Priam: "And he kissed his dread, man-slaying hands, which had slain many of his sons." SILO POMPEIUS too confessed his anger.

7.15. For he said he would not be believed, if he denied he had been angry; but he gave not the cause of his anger that FUSCUS gave; he said those grievances were to be passed over in which the son would glory; he gave this cause: that he had been abandoned by his only son, that against his will he had sailed away, seeing his father an old man, orphaned, now almost in want; that even then he had fled to avoid maintaining him; and he brought the father to prayers, and in the epilogue entreated his son. And SPARSUS too I remember declaiming with this colour — a man sane among schoolmen,

7.16. and a schoolman among the sane. CESTIUS used a far different colour; he said it was not anger in the father, but cleverness: "I had nothing," he said, "wherewith to ransom him. Whom should I ask for money in so greedy a city, in which not even sons maintain their fathers? I used a stratagem: I knew the pirates were not cruel, but greedy. I wished to bring it about both that they should despair of his being ransomed, and that, for this reason, thinking him superfluous, they should let him go. Whether I planned wisely I do not know; meanwhile I planned luckily: after those letters which he accuses, he was let go." Latro removed himself entirely from these colours, and called up his powers with so great a force in the whole pleading that he held men astounded; for he used this colour: I know not what I wrote. Long ago my mind was struck from me. From the moment I saw one son in the citadel, another in adultery, a third in kin-murder; from the moment I was sprinkled with my dying son's blood; from the moment I was left alone, orphaned, an old man — I hate my own. This colour was to be approved by his powers; for how great a force is needed, that a man should make himself pitiable by accusing himself?

7.17. ALBUCIUS mixed all the colours and, that this might be free, gave the father an advocate, and would not narrate. He began from the proposition: a father has sought maintenance from his son; then, when he came to defend the writing that he would give double if they cut off the hands, he first used the Latronian colour: "this," he said, "I answer: he knows not what he did, he was driven into madness by his ills." Here he introduced a philosophical commonplace, how minds are overturned by great calamities; then he took up an anthypophora: "you lie; nay, he was angry. You compel me," he says, "to say that he was rightly angry with you." He went through everything; this among other things he objected to him: that he had either not known, or had dissembled, that his brother was seizing the citadel; he wished thus to strip from his tyrant-slaying too its recommendation. Then he returned to that Cestian colour: "but I think he did from policy what he did. What then? What yet does this man say? Why he wrote it? He says nothing; he weeps, he wishes to die, but not of hunger." In this declamation ALBUCIUS uttered that epigram,

7.18. doubtful among admirers and mockers: do you give the bread to your dog that you do not give your father? GLYCON said excellently: "Pity him, who runs the risk of nourishing a father." GARGONIUS was a hearer of Buteo, and afterwards his successor in the school too, of a dull but most pugnacious voice, of whom the buffoon Baros said a most charming thing: "you have the voice of a hundred hoarse men." This man thought he had devised a clever colour for the father: "I dictated," he said, "'I will give double, if you do not cut off the hands': one syllable, 'not,' fell out by the copyist, and he wrote 'if you cut them off.'" A thing worthy to be uttered in that voice. ARTEMON said: "Child-loving father, does anyone shrink from punishing you too?" ADAEUS said: "We saw a swift-sailing skiff. And was anyone of the sailors in that skiff a father?" NICETES said: "'I will give double, if you strike off the hands.' The pirates asked: 'Did you ever play the tyrant?'"

8.1. THE LAW: A son shall be in the father's power. THE THEME: A man had a son, brave in war. After he had thrice fought bravely, the father wishes to disinherit him, that he may keep him at home. OF PORCIUS LATRO: Most wretched father, I should no longer see my son, did I not disinherit him. Braver than is enough for the law or the fatherland, he did not return to me a third time, but was carried back. What is left over for the fatherland, I claim for the father. My son flees me — and indeed to the enemy. How long shall I, trembling, await the news of battles? Son, for myself I ask exemption. OF CESTIUS PIUS: I disinherit my son that I may have him. My exemption profited the republic no less than his military service: I took a wife. Thus he descends into the narrative. A third time I heard, as though the gods were warning me, that the young man should set a limit to his own good fortune. I sought leave for one battle: let happen, I said, whatever I fear, if I send him into the line again; I have made a bargain with the gods. "I am not afraid," he says. This is why I am afraid. It is cast at me that my son hates me. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: O me, already weary while my son fights!

8.2. Great are the omens: do you think it nothing, that the father of a brave man should fear? Wretched me: now you are too well known to the enemy; now even the law fears I know not what on your behalf. Do you wonder if what is enough for the law is too much for a father? "Do you," he says, "reproach me with luxury?" Nay, I can even urge you toward pleasures. How long will you lie on the hard couch of the camp? How long break your sleep with the trumpet? How long live bloody? Let us be cheerful: the vows of three victories must be paid. So many battle-lines you have withstood, so many wounds; I can complain even of the republic: late are you discharged. Now and again I hear you saying, "I prefer glory to life"; this, then, is what kills me — that to die is so easy for you. At last rest from one war. OF POMPEIUS SILO.

8.3. My reason for disinheriting is that I may not live without my son, whom I should long since not see, did I not disinherit him. My disinheriting is in the power of the disinherited. OF ROMANIUS HISPO: What is more vexing than one who wearies out his own good fortune? What do you wait for, until you are cast out of the camp? OF MENTO: The republic blushes to use a soldier so scarred. So great a valour ought not to fall without a successor: a wife must be taken; but even now I warn you, do not raise but one child. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: I did not begin to hold you back until the republic discharged you. No wound can now be impressed on you save through a scar. Until now you have been longer with the enemy than with your father: at home only have you been healed. OF JUNIUS OTHO THE FATHER: The best end of valour is to stop before you fail.

8.4. THE OTHER SIDE. "Thrice bravely . . ." certainly the disinherited are allowed to fight. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: What sudden uproar has resounded here? Does the general call? I come. I laboured most in the front line. I am ashamed: men thrice conquered serve as soldiers. OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS: "How long," he says, "will you risk yourself?" It is well, judges: my father thinks me worthy to be safe. A senator, after his sixty-fifth year, is not compelled to come into the senate-house: is he forbidden? A man of praetorian rank may wear the bordered toga on festal or solemn days: is it necessary? Whatever is given under the name of reward or honour, is free both ways; otherwise it ceases to be a reward, on which necessity is laid. I obey that father of mine who used to say that by glory we are made immortal, who used to kiss the wounds of those returning from the line.

8.5. To these new and contrary commands, do you think I can be suddenly turned about? It is not so. That feeling rules within us which first entered the mind. Luxury, avarice, sloth, unchastity, fear, are not unlearned, and daily all these are either chastised or punished: so tenacious are we even of our vices. Believe me, father: I am not my own master, when that battle-cry has arisen: it bids me charge the enemy, cleave the opposing ranks with the sword; this onset, this ardour of spirit, adorned your house with thrice-won spoils of the enemy; to this you owe those thanksgivings; for the sake of this you love me even when you disinherit me. Now my spirit is not steady, now my tongue is not steady; I have been caught up in another's work; the very toga does not sit upon my shoulders.

8.6. Should you bid me go to besiege an enemy, to seize a position for a camp, to cut off the enemy's supplies — you command leisure to a spirit that is not at leisure. As often as any uproar has arisen, the eyes of all the citizens are turned upon me, they look to my hands; and yet — the truth must be told — the fatherland owes me nothing: I never fought save under compulsion. Do you think it matters at all where we are, what course of life we lead? The same perils stand round us everywhere, and there are as many roads to death. Sometimes continued toil makes men stronger: often what had strengthened, sloth has consumed. OF MARULLUS: Let me confer some service upon my country: until now my military service has been the duty of the law. I will fight even disinherited, nor will I fear that my service may be useless to my country. Even the Athenians conquered under a disinherited general. How great is the difference between me and him?

8.7. He wiped out his disinheriting by valour; I earned it. THE DIVISION. The first question was made by all, a common one: whether a son can be disinherited for the very reason that he is his own master; then, whether he ought to be. This belongs wholly to treatment. The Greeks are wont to attempt that first question, which has not gone to Roman ears: whether a brave man can be disinherited. But I do not see what they will bring forward, why he cannot. For the fact that he is brave, and so often, brings him not more right, but more recommendation.

8.8. The colour on the father's side some made the harder; for they wished the father to seem hateful to his son: so that the son would rather live with the enemy than with his father. Almost all: that the young man is insatiable of glory, and for that very reason is to be moderated and restrained by his father. Some took refuge entirely in the father's tenderness, and did not argue in the way SILO POMPEIUS argued, who divided thus, so as to say: even if you had no father, you ought to stop; since you have a father, you ought to stop, because your father forbids it;

8.9. or in the way GALLIO did, who divided this part thus: this I command for the republic's sake, for your sake, for my own sake. The latter two you see how he could fill out: that he commanded it for the republic's sake he treated thus: first, that the way to valour might lie open to more young men, the opportunity of acting bravely ought not to be seized by one alone. Then, that it is expedient for the republic not to seem to depend on one man; that the enemy's spirits would rise and his own people's be broken, if the thrice-brave man should fall by chance. Last, that it is useful to the republic that the thrice-brave man be kept, that there may be one to be shown to the youth; that he can now be more an ornament than a defence. That old thought — "now even the law fears something for the brave man" — Gallio placed here: "this too," he said, "either distrusts or takes counsel for the thrice-brave man."

8.10. They did not even follow that treatment which BLANDUS used, who said: military service is for you superfluous, it is invidious, it is dangerous. It is superfluous, because you are not compelled — nay, you are forbidden by modesty. One serves for glory's sake: you have won glory; for exemption's sake: you have won it; for reward's sake: there are three rewards at home; and so he passed on to say that it was invidious for one man so often to wish for honours and intercept them from all; how dangerous a thing envy is, how great men it has crushed; here examples. That military service is dangerous he gathered in the same place as the rest; this one new point he added about the law, that the man could no longer act bravely, because all the enemy would single him out: "evidently for this reason the law discharged the thrice-brave man: it knows that he is now marked out by the enemy."

8.11. These things, then, being passed over, those who brought on a loving father pleaded in this manner: "I cannot bear it, I cannot endure my longing for you." Here AESCHINES, of the new declaimers, when he said: not glory has made me more desirous of you, not your valour admired by all; I will confess, he said, a father's feelings, which let each man interpret as he will: "thus would I love you even disinherited." He seemed, while expressing tenderness, not to have preserved the father's dignity. It pleased Latro rather to hold the father back by reason than by feeling, since in reason feeling too has some place.

8.12. ASPRENAS followed a far different colour; for he said he did not refuse the republic a brave man's services, but reserved them for necessary occasions. If some great war should befall, then even veterans are called to arms. And that epigram of his was much praised in this place: "now let those serve who must; you will serve, if there be need." So, he said, the Roman people came to Scipio Aemilianus, when a greater war at Numantia had loomed than the other generals could sustain; a great interval was given to Scipio between Carthage and Numantia. So they came to Pompey, when the pirates had closed the seas. Great defences are not to be used up. Here Asprenas too spoke an epigram about the law: "evidently for such occasions the law set aside the thrice-brave man."

8.13. On the son's side some introduced a colour to make him eager for glory and warlike. NICETES indeed used this phrase: "we shall present him to the judges as a war-lover," and so pleaded that he should complain that his hands were idle, that they were unarmed. This colour did not please Latro: he preferred that the young man should serve by judgement rather than by disease. "This," he said, "is what the father may effectively say — that his son detracts from the glory of his own deeds, rash, bloodthirsty, whom neither a father can hold back nor the law discharge."

8.14. Some made a bargain with the father — like Mento, who said he wished to serve but once more, that he might seem to have rendered the republic something beyond the law. Some declared perpetual military service: as long as his strength held, the brave man would not fail the republic. Latro did not approve this colour; he denied that the father's hope in his son should be cut off forever. VIBIUS RUFUS pleaded with the same colour as Mento, but added this: that there reached him those voices of the envious: "did he fight any longer than he had to?" Some thought this too was a thing composed and feigned between us — that I should wish to serve, and you forbid it.

8.15. Latro pleaded vehemently on the father's side, and added: even when he is disinherited I will not let him go out; I will lay hands on him, hold him, and at the last fling this corpse of mine before the threshold as he goes out: that you may reach the enemy, trample on your father. PLANCUS, a great lover of Latro, thought this thought was said more forcibly by Latro, more tenderly by LESBOCLES the Greek, who said: "thus shall I lie, like a wall: leap over the trench and your father." FUSCUS ARELLIUS brought on the father with religious awe and terrified by omens; he said that his teacher, in describing the perils of the coming battle in this controversia, began from this line of Homer: "Strange man, your own valour will destroy you." GLYCON said: "you shall see how I despise this death for my country's sake." DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS said: "if you succeed, you will add one deed of valour; if you fail, you will lose three deeds of valour."

8.16. GLYCON said: "it is not easy to be sent off well by one who is weeping." AESCHINES — not the orator, for then there was no zeal for declamation, but this one of the new declaimers — said, when he was warning his son of the danger and saying he was touched by presentiments: "a father's soul, somehow, is most prophetic." DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS spoke an epigram which could please not only in declamation but even in some more solid kind of writing, when he was treating the commonplace on the changefulness of fortune: "there is but one safety against fortune — not to tempt her too often." DORION said a thing somewhat loftier than terse and restrained oratory admits, but by which he splendidly expressed the father's astonished feelings: "What desire is this, child, to drink things bloodied, to eat things bloodied? I fear, somewhere, a pitched battle; I fear, somewhere, a bond; I fear, somewhere, an array. I fear for the whole world. Why, child, do you blush?"