Book 2

pr.1. When I was calling to mind whatever good declaimers I had ever heard, there came to me, among others, Fabianus the philosopher, who, while still quite young, was of as great repute in declaiming as he was afterwards in philosophical disputation. He trained under Arellius Fuscus, whose style of speaking he imitated, but afterwards spent more labour to escape its likeness than he had spent to reproduce it. The exposition of Arellius Fuscus was indeed splendid, but laborious and intricate; its ornament was too studiously sought, and the arrangement of its words softer than a mind preparing itself for such holy and strong precepts could endure; there was the greatest unevenness in the speech, which was now meagre, now, by excessive licence, wandering and diffuse: the openings, the arguments, the narratives were spoken drily, while in the descriptions all freedom was given to every word, provided it glittered. There was nothing keen, nothing solid, nothing rugged; a splendid style, more wanton than rich.

pr.2. From this Fabianus quickly separated himself, and the rankness, indeed, he cast off when he wished, but obscurity he could not escape; this followed him even into philosophy. Often he says less than is enough for the listener, and in his supreme and most simple faculty of speech there yet remain traces of the old faults. Some things end so suddenly that they are not short, but cut off. Now Fabianus generally uttered sweet epigrams, and whenever any subject fell to him that admitted a reproach of the age, he was inspired with a great rather than a keen spirit. He lacked oratorical strength and that fighting blade; but a splendour, as if spontaneous, attended his unlaboured speech. The speaker's face was gentle, and, in keeping with the calm of his character, relaxed; there was no straining of the voice, no vehemence of the body, while his words flowed as though unbidden. Evidently a spirit by now composed and at peace, when it had repressed true feelings and driven anger and grief far off, could not well imitate the things it had escaped.

pr.3. He was better suited to suasoriae; the features of places, the courses of rivers, the situations of cities and the customs of peoples no one described more abundantly. He never came to a stop for want of a word, but with the swiftest and easiest flow his speech, in all its wealth, washed round every theme. These things, my dearest son Mela, I relate the more gladly, because I see your mind shrinking from public duties and turning away from all ambition, craving this one thing — to crave nothing. Only study eloquence: from it the passage to all other arts is easy; it equips even those whom it does not train for itself. And you have no reason to think a trap is being laid for you, as though I were contriving that the favour of a successful pursuit might hold you. I, for my part, am no hindrance to a good mind: go where your spirit inclines, and, content with your father's rank, withdraw a great part of yourself from fortune.

pr.4. You had, indeed, a greater talent than your brothers, most capable of all good arts: and this very thing is a pledge of the better talent, not to be corrupted by its own goodness, so as to misuse it. But since your brothers are bent on ambition, and prepare themselves for the forum and for honours — in which the very things that are hoped for are to be feared — I too, otherwise eager for that advancement, and an encourager and praiser even of a perilous industry, provided only it be honourable, while two of my sons sail the open sea, keep you in harbour. But the practice of declamation will profit you in those things you turn over in your whole mind, just as it profited Fabianus: who, that he might at last hear Sextius, nonetheless kept declaiming, and so diligently that you would think he was being trained for that study, not preparing himself through it for another.

pr.5. He had also Blandus the rhetor for a teacher, who was the first Roman knight to teach at Rome: before him this fairest of disciplines was confined among freedmen teachers, and by a most unworthy custom it was base to teach what it was honourable to learn. For the first Latin rhetor at Rome was Plotius, when Cicero was a boy. Under Blandus he studied longer than under Arellius Fuscus, but when he had now deserted to philosophy, in that time when he studied eloquence not for eloquence's sake. I know that, when you have heard his epigrams, you will wish to hear many more. But neither did he have leisure for declamations for long, and I, being so much younger than he, heard him as often as it fell out, not as often as I wished. Into this little book, therefore, I shall gather whatever of his sayings I retain.

1.1. THE THEME: A man had three rich sons. A poor man, with one son, disinherited that son, who was adopted by the rich man and grew rich. The rich man, having disinherited his own three sons, wished to adopt this man too. He refuses, and is disinherited by his father. — Is this my fortune — that at one and the same time I am both disinherited and adopted? That house, of course, which has no room for me as a young man, made you an old one. Quieter times we had as poor men; the civil wars we waged with the Capitol gilded. Do you call gold and silver riches — the playthings of fortune, which sometimes are sold along with their very masters? I give you notice, rich man: even if I come, I shall take pains — which in your house is most easy — to be disinherited. Though many things happen contrary to expectation, yet I never thought it would come about that either my father should hate his children or a rich man covet them. I do not long for a patrimony: happiness is fragile and fleeting, and all the showy gleam of flattering fortune comes with peril: often without cause she has cherished, and without reason forsaken. I have seen the general of a great army fleeing without a companion; I have seen the thresholds, once thronged by a crowd of clients, deserted and put up for sale under the master who was their agent of ruin. For why should I speak of men rolled down from the height of wealth to beggary? Many examples will occur to you, even if you seek them in a single house.

1.2. OF VIBIUS RUFUS: That children are to be kept, even he judges who keeps them with no great gladness. I invited those children of mine to share my trifles: shall I, who promised them my house, snatch away their own? What shall I do? If I obey, I shall be disinherited; if I do not obey, I shall be disinherited. I love my father: this is my obstinacy. The rich man has no son: will you give me? The rich man may recall his own: will you take me back? Thus I refuse not to be adopted, but to be lent out.

1.3. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Receive a witness to my life — one whom you value highly: a rich man whom it is hard to please. Do you wish to know why I will not leave my father? Because he begot me, because he reared me, because he disinherited me. Long I doubted whether the one was testing a friend, or the other a son. "I disinherit you," he says. Is this a true father? What can I hope from the man who will adopt me? THE NARRATIVE OF CESTIUS PIUS: The rich man raised one son: he was not content; for what was one to a rich man? He raised three; he might have given one in adoption: he disinherited one, a second, a third. Do you think now there is nothing left to the rich man? He disinherits a fourth.

1.4. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Whoever you are, greedy keeper of money and worshipper of measureless lands: when you have got much, will you be able to enjoy it all? You seek a son: behold, here is a crowd of young men without a father. Command what you will: I will sail, I will serve as a soldier, provided that, wherever I am, I am yours. Are we poor, who have what rich men beg for? Whence such a father? You are not angry, save to show love. And further, are those patrimonies, into which in your madness you rush headlong, the joys of their masters, or their burdens? You used to recite a thousand examples of men crashing down amid their own riches, and among them you placed the rich man's house too. Did you disinherit deservedly, or undeservedly? If undeservedly, I hate a father who casts out so many innocents; if deservedly, I hate a house that makes so many guilty. Something not to be done I shall do in a wealthy house. What with us is frugality, with them is meanness. You ask back your sons rather than take them back.

1.5. Even now the people, conqueror of all nations, keeps a cottage on the Capitol — a people whose great good fortune no one wonders at; deservedly is it powerful: surely it is sprung from one who did not leave his father. As you go out from your house and return, I at least will attend you, nor will I leave you save at the threshold: I shall be a son in public. I love poverty as much as my father: to both I am accustomed. I cannot play the son in a rich man's house. If you were selling a slave dear to you, you would ask whether the buyer were cruel. By Hercules, I value one single hour in which I may satisfy you when you are angry, at three times more than the whole patrimony. This thing alone, of all — that you so wish to lose me — I cannot love enough. What shall I do, adopted? Shall I speak well of his sons?

1.6. Of the disinheriting? Shall I enter your house, as though I had cast you out? Shall I seize your ornaments, so that, if I commit any fault there, neither your father nor mine may take me back? What is there that I must either deny or excuse? You do not charge your son with the most insane evil of extravagance, with shameful loves, with a luxurious dress, or with drinking-bouts. If you cannot bring these charges, copy at least some from your friend's notebooks: dripping with foreign unguents, riddled with lusts, walking, that he may please women, more softly than a woman — and the rest, which belong to disease, not to a judge.

1.7. Disinheriting is a talkative thing: how I love you, poverty, if by your kindness I am innocent! I have no accuser; nay — wretched me — I even have a praiser, and one whom not all men please: for I would rather say this than "one whom all men displease." Yours is not a house propped up by many children, nor does a crowd stray about your side, nor is there a host of heirs within your threshold, nor would you keep someone in reserve after me. And yet not even thus ought you to have given me away, when you had seen the gods contending with a father's vows. For he is safer against fortune who has something left after his loss, and we have the example: that a man can lose three sons. That Croesus, richest among kings, remember, was led off with his hands bound behind his back. And you, Crassus, after you had tracked out those arms of the runaway slaves, the richest man of the Roman city — what now? Among the Parthians you lack even a tomb.

1.8. I pass over the . . . thousands of examples of men crashing down amid their own riches: I do not relate how often, among these, you have set the rich man's house, losing its better sons by its riches. This I know our ancestors fled; this Aelius Tubero, whose poverty was a virtue; this Fabricius, refusing the gifts of the Samnites; this the rest of our fathers, whom, at the very plough, as they goaded their cattle, lictors stood about. Rise, rise, most wretched young men, and by entreating my father learn to entreat your own.

1.9. OF BLANDUS: He begot three, he disinherits four. "I disinherit you," he says. It is plain whence you come. OF VIBIUS GALLUS: If anyone hears that I am to be adopted, he at once thinks me disinherited; if anyone hears that I am being disinherited, he at once thinks me adopted. Why . . . I answer: lest I take from a father his son, from sons their father. Will you not be corrected even by so near an example? He who disinherits his own seeks others. No happiness is sure: a little while ago I envied the rich man's sons, now they envy me. My father praises me while he disinherits, I praise my father while I am disinherited; this is our one debate: he thinks me worthy of a wealthy father, I think myself worthy of my own.

1.10. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: Behold, drawn-up armies, often of fellow-citizens and kinsmen about to join battle, have taken their stand, and the hills are filled with horses and men, and presently the whole region is strewn with the bodies of the slain; amid that multitude of corpses, then, or amid the plunderers, someone might ask: what cause has driven man against man into wickedness? — for neither do wild beasts wage war among themselves, nor, if they did, would the same beseem man, a kind gentle and nearest to the divine — what so great wrath bears you on, when you are one stock and the same blood,

1.11. or what furies have driven you to mutual bloodshed? What so great an evil has been laid by fate, or by chance, upon that race? Was it, that banquets may be furnished for peoples and roofs may gleam with gold, that kin-murder was worth so much? Great, forsooth, are those dainties, for which men would rather, as parricides, look upon their own table and panelled ceilings than, as innocents, upon the light. Or, that nothing be denied to belly or to lust, must the slavery of the world be sought after? To what end, in fine, are these pestilent riches sought, if not even to this — that they may be left to children? What, in the end, is there that riches have not corrupted? First, if you wish to begin from there, the very houses, which men have built up so high that homes, made ready for use and defence, are now a peril, not a protection: so great is the height of the buildings and so great the narrowness of the streets, that there is neither defence against fire, nor any escape, on any side, from the ruins.

1.12. To the delights of mad luxury every stone is dug out, the woods are felled in all lands of the earth; bronze and iron are used, now gold too, in building and adorning houses; merely that men may anxiously, both by day and by night, dread ruin and fire — which, whether thrown upon roofs or fortuitous, makes those panelled ceilings and chambers the very destroyers of cities: for men do not defend their own, but in the common peril seize what is another's, and in their own houses the stronger ownerships fall to others, and they themselves, while they are most ablaze, carry off plunder from another's ruins. To these ends, then, is that veined stone cut, and covers a wall with a thin facing — and the floor is laid in mosaic and gold is poured upon the ceilings?

1.13. O poverty, how unknown a good you are! Nay, men imitate mountains and forests within their decaying houses, and in shade and smoke counterfeit green things, or seas and rivers. I can scarcely believe that any of them has seen the open forests and the plains, through which a swift river, whether headlong from a precipice or, when spread over the level, gently flowing, runs between; that they have ever seen the seas wide from a hill, or in winter, when stirred to their depths by the winds. For who could delight his mind with imitations so perverse, if he had known the true? Evidently, just as to infants the things that can be touched and grasped by hand or in the lap . . . for a small mind cannot hold great things; hence to the shores too masses are carried, and, heaping up earth in the deep, men build out their bays. Others let in the sea by channels: so unable are they to take joy in anything true, but, against nature, things displaced — earth or sea, exchanged — are a delight to their sick minds. And do you wonder if, to men suffering from a loathing of the works of nature, now not even their own children, but only others', are pleasing?

1.14. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: I alone of all men am disinherited because my own father loves me, and another seeks me. What does he charge me with? Do I love harlots? Have I run into debt? Speak — let the rich man hear. "I wish you," he says, "to be rich." O me, worthy to be disinherited, if I leave such a father! My father used to praise poverty to me, used to tell me of the discomforts of the rich, used to say that many rich men were accused; I, at least, remember that they were disinherited. "I disinherit you" is not a word of my father's.

1.15. OF TRIARIUS: Why do you disinherit me? Do I spend day and night in base banquets? Do I live mostly in a brothel? If you do not know what crimes are charged against me, learn them from a friend. If all men are bad, what is more wretched than this father? If they are good, what is more bloody than this father? OF ROMANIUS HISPO: Shall I go into that house, in which either a father so often runs mad, or a son so often sins against his father? When I come forth suddenly rich, all will say: who is this whom great fortune does not become? This is the rich man's fourth disinheriting. OF POMPEIUS SILO.

1.16. However much there is, it is enough for me; I am an only son. Bravely will I bear my fortune; this is not the first time it has happened to me. I am an only son, and already I am disinherited. What you would have me seem, I do not know: innocent? But I am disinherited. Guilty? But I am adopted. Yet, however that may be, disinheriting is the more bearable: it disinherits one; adoption will disinherit three. It cannot be said to me what is said to other disinherited men: "It was in your own power; had you obeyed your father, you would not have lost a father"; for even had I not been disinherited, I was to lose one.

1.17. THE OTHER SIDE. OF PORCIUS LATRO: If I did not know what an evil poverty is, I should now understand it: my son does not fear disinheriting. The images of the Fabricii lay open to the Metelli; adoption mingled the families of the Aemilii and the Scipiones; even names abolished for ages shine again through new successors. So that nobility of the patricians, by the foundations of the city, has stood firm down to these times. Adoption is the remedy of fortune. I am not ignorant of those whose poverty, in idleness, in corners, rails at the convicted prosperity of the rich, and pursues them with accusations, and lets them have no peace. But no material in human affairs displays virtues more brightly: the census ascends to the senatorial rank, the census distinguishes the Roman knight from the commons, the census advances a man's standing in the camp, the census chooses the judges in the forum. Have I not persuaded you? Go, then, to those whom you would rather follow than bring back. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER.

1.18. I can more easily praise poverty than bear it. Why do you speak to me of Phocion, why of Aristides? Then poverty was the fashion of the age. Why do you speak of the Fabricii, why of the Coruncanii? Those are the examples of a procession, where the gods were of clay. It is easy, where you have never known riches, to be poor. What you wish for your children, I command of mine.

1.19. THE DIVISION. I do not think you ask how this controversia was divided, since it has nothing of difficulty in it; yet FUSCUS divided thus: I say it was lawful for him to adopt; I say it was lawful for me to refuse the adoption; I say that, even were it not lawful, I yet rightly refused: for both what is done by right is true, and what is done without right, provided it have reason, is rightly done. When he treated of right, he said: "you are," he says, "under your father's discretion." If in this I am made subject to my father, because I am dutiful, then surely it is for this — that I may be dutiful; and the argument is at hand: surely I am answering one who disinherits me. What, then, do I answer him? Plainly I am acting that I may not cease to be a son; and the same I do when I answer one who emancipates me. For what difference does it make, as to losing a father, whether I am cast out or transferred? If it is not lawful to refuse, I ask: why do you rather disinherit me than hand me over? When he treated of duty, he divided into these: I say a son ought not to have been given in adoption without great cause; I say much less by you; I say least of all to that man.

1.20. SILO POMPEIUS divided thus: he began from the old and exploded question, whether a father is to be obeyed in all things; even if in all things, whether he is yet not to be obeyed in that whereby it is brought about that he ceases to be a father; then he asked whether an unwilling son can be given in adoption: if he cannot, he cannot be disinherited for this — that he used his discretion: yet so that he can be, not when he uses his discretion against his father's will, but when he uses it ill. Here he subjoined, whether this man used it well. Then he treated the part of duty, and divided thus: that the adoption is base, that it is useless, that it is dangerous. When he said it was base, he said: how inhuman it is to invade another's goods, to lie in wait for three sons, and to snatch from children the hope of reconciliation with their father! When he said it was useless, he said it was useless to the father, useless to the adopter, useless to himself. When he said it was useless to the father, he treated how grievous a thing it is to be deprived of an only son, how much more grievous to be deprived of one whom another covets; and when he said that the rich man himself too, who had so many consolations, sought a son, he said: it will not be easy for you to adopt. When he said the adoption was useless to the rich man, he treated thus:

1.21. that it would come about that his own sons would return to him, if he had not adopted. Here he seemed to say prettily: if you understand the father's mind, he gives you a hint how to reconcile his own: he declares that he cannot bear solitude. When he said it was useless to himself, he praised poverty, inveighed against riches; he said he could be corrupted by riches, by which even armies can be corrupted. When he inveighed against riches, he said: they say the rich have many vices, but this is the gravest — they do not love their own. And there is no reason for anyone to think himself firm enough to repel vices: by their very touch they harm the passer-by. I fear lest I should learn to sin. See how quickly you have learned to disinherit! He said that the man would come to displease the rich man when more closely inspected; that his very love of poverty would be loathed by them; he said it would come about that he would be disinherited, if he displeased his adopter: I do not even please my own father. He added that the adoption would be dangerous for him too, in a house that longs for its own masters, and where the whole household desires to expel a grafted heir:

1.22. Latro placed last the question he was generally wont to use: even if he did not act rightly in being unwilling to be adopted by the rich man, whether, if he did this with a good mind toward his father, he is yet to be pardoned; and then whether he did do it with a good mind toward his father. In this question the cause of the young man, who loves his father and prefers him to riches, is good; yet Latro denied that the father would yield, granting that it was done with a good mind toward himself, but would say it was a collusion of sons against a father.

1.23. . . . some unspoken thing or other it had seemed to BROCCO, a certain not bad rhetor, who had said that the young man seemed to him to have certain capital vices; that a man thinks ill of himself who is unwilling to go before a judge strict toward innocence. ARGENTARIUS passed over all the earlier parts, and came at once to this: whether or not he ought to have obeyed his father; and he cast the declamation into a figure. "I wish," he said, "that someone would disinherit a son who has asked his poor father to give him in adoption to a rich man; how good a cause the father will have! He will say thus." Then, when he had declaimed that controversia which had not been set, he passed on thus: "if that son had a bad cause, I have a good one."

1.24. He compared his own cause with that one. There was more inquiry about the colour — whether the young man ought to say anything against the rich man. For what shall he do? Shall he speak against the man who shows him such honour, and against his father's friend? Shall he not speak against the man he flees? And yet even those who had imposed on themselves abstinence from abuse did not keep it well: the sweetness of some epigram crept up on them, before which they could not stand fast. The dry declaimers more faithfully maintain the colours they have set up: for nothing tempts them, no figure, no epigram. So women who have an ugly face are oftener chaste: it is not the will they lack,

1.25. but a corrupter. FABIANUS the philosopher used this colour, so as to say: even if I could bear to be handed over to someone, I would not to a rich man. And he spoke against riches, not against the rich man: that they were the things that had stormed frugality and piety, that made bad fathers, bad sons. GALLUS VIBIUS was once of as great eloquence as he was afterwards of madness — he being the only man, I know, to whom it happened to fall into madness not by chance but to arrive at it by judgement; for while he imitated madmen, while he thought frenzy the allurement of genius, what he so often feigned he reduced to reality. He declaimed this controversia the day after it had been delivered by Fabianus;

1.26. and he was wont to come to his commonplaces in such a way that, about to describe love, he would say, almost in the manner of a singer: "I wish to describe love," just as one might say "I wish to rave." Then he would describe it, and as often as he was about to begin he repeated: "I wish to describe love." In this controversia he plainly attained what he wished — to bring riches into hatred with us. For often he flung out: "I wish to describe riches," and unfolded many things eloquently, more corruptly than Fabianus, but more sweetly. This one thing occurs in which there is a little madness: "the unknown herds of slaves do not delight me, nor the resounding workhouses of a wide estate:

1.27. for nothing I love my father." FUSCUS ARELLIUS spoke this colour too: I am offended by omens. When first I began to think of this adoption, three disinherited men came to my mind, and I hear that in that house there were three sons, and are no more. I fear a house unhappy in its children. And he gave other causes too — for a disinherited man may say more things on account of which he would not [choose] — but I now relate the one point on which each man chiefly insisted. Latro used this colour: that he had been a companion to the rich man's three sons. "I always," he said, "cultivated them; nay, I cultivate them still. When they were disinherited, I advised them to keep silent and soften their father by yielding; I said: as soon as you think the time fit, my father will entreat yours. See — they remind me that the time is most fit. It is true; the father can find no fitter time for reconciliation: a rich man seeks sons." CESTIUS with this colour:

1.28. those whom he could not terrify by disinheriting, he thinks to chastise by adopting. He does not covet your son: he is correcting his own. When he thinks them corrected, he will disinherit me, having threatened me enough. "He will not do it," he says. And yet he has had no one until now in whom he could do this either more easily or more justly. FABIANUS pleaded with this colour, as I said: I do not wish to be rich. RUFUS VIBIUS with this: I do not know how to be rich. When he said these things in this place, they were taken up with applause: there is no reason for you to think riches suit all men; for nothing is more harmful than a newly-rich man. And he said this: let another man speak high words and seek glory from contempt of riches; I do not say, "I do not wish to be rich," but "I do not know how."

1.29. ALBUCIUS too attacked riches, and spoke a fine epigram about Fabricius: "he spurned royal gifts," he said: "with the gold he would have received a master too." And he treated that commonplace excellently: I shall hold all my food suspect, all my drink; three sets of tutors are there; whoever is most frugal will wish to kill me. The poor do not fear poison, do not fear an heir; until now we did not even fear disinheriting.

1.30. SILO POMPEIUS pleaded with this colour: no one can please him. Not even in this did he keep anyone — that he should not disinherit all. "Behold now," he said, "he has found a new kind of disinheriting, that they may not hope anything from a return." And when he had said much against the rich man, he said: there is no reason for you to wonder if I hate you: I love those whom you have disinherited. The colour on the father's side requires some care. Some brought on a father greedy for riches — which seemed invidious in this case, because he wishes to give riches to a son in such a way as to snatch them from his sons. And so LATRO used the best colour: "for this reason," he said, "I wish to give you in adoption — that through you the disinherited may more easily be reconciled."

1.31. CESTIUS: "I fear," he says, "I may be disinherited." I should wish you to fear it. ALBUCIUS used this colour: that he had the closest friendship with the rich man; that he had said to him, when he doubted whether to raise a son: "raise him," he said, "into my patrimony; I shall judge that boy a brother of my children." And so, when he was disinheriting even his third son, he said: why do you mock me thus, as though I were childless? Even now I have a son. He came to me and said: give me back the one you reared: if my children are reformed, I shall have this one with them; if they persist in their madness, I shall have this one in their stead. I tried at once to bring him back into harmony with his sons: it was untimely. I tried to compel him by withdrawing my own: he answered, as though a rich man could not lack a son. SILO said:

1.32. "I am," he says, "the friend of the disinherited." What then? Would you rather he adopt an enemy? If you enter the house, you will see whether some men turn the father's mind away from his sons. "If he takes them back," he says, "what will become of me?" The rich man's house holds even four children. If they grudge to have you for a brother, I shall most gladly take you back. So well has the rich man deserved of me, that I am ready both to give him a son and to lend one. BLANDUS pleaded with this colour, so as to say that the rich man was inexorable toward his children. That he himself had done everything to appease him; that the causes seemed great and grave; and so that the adoption was certain to come about.

1.33. OTHO JUNIUS the father was wont to deliver difficult controversiae prettily — those in which one needed a middle path between silence and significance. He published, indeed, four books of colours, which our GALLIO prettily used to call the books of Antiphon: so full of dreams are they. And this fault he had drawn from the ancients who handed down the art of speaking; for they approve those colours which cannot be refuted — not, as dreams, that they should be . . . but that they should not be offensive under any name. But it is ridiculous to affect what cannot be proved false. It makes little difference, in one's own case, whether a man produces a false witness, or himself:

1.34. for the one ought not to be believed, the other is not wont to be. Yet OTHO JUNIUS spoke well these controversiae which had to be spoken with insinuation. And so I remember him speaking excellently for that woman, accused of adultery, against whom SYRIACUS VALLIUS, an eloquent man, had sworn a charge. The nature of the trial was such: a master swore that he had caught a handsome young man with his wife in the bedchamber, and on this account put away his wife. The slave being prosecuted for adultery on this charge, the master did not defend him, and the woman against whom the action was brought guarded the precedent. There was need of some colour, since she had been seen in the bedchamber with the slave and the husband.

1.35. OTHO JUNIUS laid down nothing certain, but only treated excellently of a woman ensnared by her husband; how useful his pleading had been at once appeared when NIGER BRUTTEDIUS spoke, who used this colour: that the slave had been summoned by the master to recline between himself and his mistress; that she had not suffered it; that the husband, indignant, had leapt up as upon a corrupter. He used a more corrupt colour than . . . : for he said the slave had been summoned to act as pander to his master's lust. SYRIACUS, when in his second speech he pressed this colour, said many eloquent things, among which this too: "the accuser brought the adulterer right into the bedchamber, the patron into the bed" — and almost carried off the case. And Syriacus did this slyly too, and answered prettily: when he spoke in his first speech, he did not lay down a case, but argued; he said he would prove she had been caught in the bedchamber with the slave.

1.36. NIGER BRUTTEDIUS, when he pleaded, objected to Syriacus that he had not laid down a case, and pressed him persistently as to why it did not appear how the slave had been solicited, how brought into the bedchamber. When Syriacus answered, he said: first, we did not study under the same teacher: you had Apollodorus, who always wishes a narration; I had Theodorus, who does not always. Next, if you ask, Niger, why I did not narrate: I did it that you might narrate those things. And against Maximus Stertinius, by whom he was pressed, though he had been his companion, he said: for twelve years I was in your service; tell me, what did I do wrong in your house? But this is your custom: you call the end of servitude an injury. We are dear to you only so long as we are useful. These sayings of Syriacus, taken up with great applause, occurred to me, and I could not pass them over: I return to OTHO, from whom I have wandered too far.

1.37. He was wont to maintain these colours that require silence and significance; and so he spoke this controversia too with this colour, as though he did it for the correction of the disinherited and for the sake of reconciliation. This he did not disclose, but used all his epigrams to tend toward it, as: "I cannot," he says, "endure life without my father." And do you think I can endure life without you? And do you think any father can endure life without his children? And this: believe me, two fathers think nothing impious about their children. And this: "let him take back his own," he says; "I cannot bear life without you." This perhaps will please him — that you will wish to return to your father. And this: do you not love the disinherited?

1.38. Then take possession of their house. Do you love them? Then save it. He said this too: "gladly," he says, "am I poor": and so am I. Someone will say: "why then do you give your son in adoption to a rich man?" He will admit the excuse if I say: I do it for my sons' sake; even so I act more honourably than if I handed my son over to him. And this: this is either my plan, or his, or our common one; grant that you agree: he is joining two old men. And this: O the rash and incautious obstinacy of youth! Perhaps the adoption would now be superfluous, had he not resisted. And this: I do not take you back; do all you will, I shall not be the father of a childless rich man. And this at the end: you know that I too am not poor against my will; I begot you, I taught you to despise riches; follow my authority. I advise nothing base, I covet nothing sordid; trust my good faith, it is expedient that this be done. "For whom?" he says. For me, for you, for the rich man; I say no more.

1.39. He spoke the whole controversia well, indeed, but in such a manner that, while he was speaking, you would think it ought to be spoken so, and then would wonder what need he had of an insinuating delivery, when he might have used an open one. Prettily about this fault of his Scaurus used to say that he read the records into his own ear. GLYCON SPYRIDION, on the other side, spoke an epigram sweet enough: "Let us save those whom you disinherit, confessing that you have loved them." ARTEMON said: "Riches, father, are no sure possession, where three secret rich men meet you." HERMAGORAS said: "We shall go the rounds, four men secret from one."

2.1. THE THEME: A man and his wife swore that if anything happened to one of them, the other would die too. The husband, while abroad, sent a messenger to his wife to say he was dead. The wife, hearing this, threw herself from a height; she was picked up, and, being restored, was bidden by her father to leave her husband. When she refuses, he disinherits her. OF PORCIUS LATRO: Immortal gods, with what providence as you ought you rule the human race: you brought it about that this was not the peril of a loving woman, but the proof of her. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Before we swore, this was long an unspoken law between us. If she is disinherited, she will not live. This her father does not believe. It is nothing new; her husband did not believe it either. You ask what the oath was? "So may I please my father." OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Now, wife, I shall not sail, I shall not travel abroad. Your good faith has made me timid. "He lied," he says; this is the way of lovers; that is why we believe none but those who swear. Does my father-in-law wish to part those whom not even death will part? "I shall die," she says; "I have both a cause and an example: some women have thrown themselves upon the burning pyres of their husbands, some have ransomed their husbands' lives with their own as a substitute. How great a glory is bought with a short anxiety! O happy you, wife! Among these you are numbered while still alive."

2.2. OF MARULLUS: There were constant contentions: "I love more"; "no, I do more." "I cannot live without you"; "no, I without you." The end that contenders usually come to — we swore. You looked upon us, gods, whom we never violated. OF ROMANIUS HISPO: It is hard, judges, to render the reasons for those secrets which are pleasant to lovers even without reason. And there is no cause for you to think that today it is only her disinheriting that is at stake: it is her life. You know how she loves her own: she can no more live without her father than without her husband.

2.3. OF JUNIUS GALLIO: Father-in-law — for so I shall call you as long as I live — what mean these deeper groans and these stronger sighs amid your tears? You seem, girl, to promise something stronger. I am not worth so much, that you should risk yourself twice for me. OF ARGENTARIUS: The indulgence of her family harms her. The woman fell into two perils, neither of which she would have known, had she loved her husband less or her father less. OF ALFIUS FLAVUS: And there is no cause for you to think her longing for him is the easier to bear: she loves her father too, as though she had sworn to die.

2.4. THE OTHER SIDE. OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS: Surely, if anything happens to her husband, the wife will perish; and if I know my daughter well, she will perish if anything happens to my son-in-law. My daughter is going to die: I will add what is shameful — if anything happens to my daughter, her husband will live. See by what a law you have bound yourself: if you obey your husband, you will die; if you obey your father, you will live. OF BLANDUS: O a fair bargain! To the one she owes her life, to the other she devotes it. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: "I cannot," she says, "leave my husband." Is there anything you cannot do, who can die? He who had sent the message of a false death almost received that of a true one. The husband, while he loved his wife too much, was almost the cause of peril; the wife, while she loves her husband too much, was almost the cause of mourning; the father, while he loves his daughter too much, disinherits her. Gods, save a whole house labouring with mutual love. "I shall die," she says: this you threaten your father, you promise your husband. You can bear life without your husband; you bore his absence abroad. She can more easily do without the one to whom she owes her life than without the one to whom she devotes it.

2.5. This controversia too needs no division; for besides that one question — whether a father can disinherit on account of marriage — the rest, since they pertain to equity, belong to treatment. Yet Latro made an excellent conjectural question; he propounded this: whether, even if the husband acted with no bad mind toward his wife, he is yet, being so rash and inconsiderate, to be left; then, whether he acted even with a bad mind toward his wife. ARELLIUS FUSCUS subjoined to the question of law that she could not depart from her husband: for the oath bound her to this too. For without doubt this was the mind of those who swore — that they should not be parted while living, since they had even provided that they should not be divided by death.

2.6. To LATRO it seemed the contrary: that the odium of the oath was being loaded on, when it ought to be lightened: that oath seems against fortune, this even against the father. CESTIUS did the contrary and said outright that by that mischance she was freed from the oath; that they themselves were released from the bond of the obligation, and therefore there would be no peril to the wife if anything happened to the husband. SILO POMPEIUS said the contrary — that she was bound by the oath — and added that, even if she were parted by divorce, the compact of the agreement would yet not be dissolved; "and therefore," he said, "I claim an honourable title for our death, lest, if anything happen, either I should die for another man's wife, or she for another woman's husband." HISPO ROMANIUS used this colour:

2.7. that the oath was a jest; that, as lovers swear many things daily, so she too had sworn; and so that, forgetting she had sworn, he sent the message, to test whether his wife's affection still held; that the wife understood the message was false, and threw herself from that place from which, when thrown, she could not perish: "so that, just as I," he said, "had frightened her with a false message, she might frighten me with a false peril." MARULLUS, our teacher, used a word freely enough that expressed the sense, when he said that the wife understood her husband's falsehood: and she herself played back against her husband's rash jests. This controversia I remember being declaimed by OVID

2.8. NASO before the rhetor Arellius Fuscus, whose hearer he was; for he was an admirer of Latro, though he followed a different style of speaking. He had a polished and graceful and lovable talent. His prose even then could seem nothing else than verse set loose. And so studiously did he hear Latro, that he transferred many of his epigrams into his own verses. In the contest over the arms Latro had said: "let us send the arms into the enemy and seek them." Naso said: "Let the arms of the brave man be sent into the midst of the foe; thence bid them be sought." And another thought from that suasoria he likewise borrowed from Latro. I remember Latro saying in a certain preface what the schoolmen had learned as though it were a poem: "do you not see how an unstirred torch lies dull, but, shaken, gives back its fires? Leisure softens men, iron is worn away by rust and gathers corrosion, sloth unteaches us." Naso said: "I myself have seen flames grow when the torch was shaken, and again die when no one stirred them."

2.9. At that time, indeed, when he was studying, he was held a good declaimer. This controversia, at least, he declaimed before Arellius Fuscus, as it seemed to me, far more ingeniously, except for this — that he had run through the commonplaces without any fixed order. These sayings, as he spoke, I remember being taken up: all the labour lies in this — to grant that a wife should love a husband, and a husband a wife. Then you must allow them to swear, if you have allowed them to love. What oath do you think we had? You were to us a holy name; if we should lie, she invoked her father angry with her, I my father-in-law. Spare us, father: we did not forswear ourselves. See how our reproacher is borne on by an unbridled love! He complains that anyone besides himself is dear to his daughter. What is there that can call him away from his indulgence?

2.10. Good gods, how did this man love his wife? He loves his daughter, and disinherits her; he grieves that she has been in peril, and takes her away from the man without whom she says she cannot live; he complains of her peril, which this man, who bids her love cautiously, has almost lacked. You may more easily obtain an end of love than a measure. Will you obtain this — that they keep the bounds you approve, that they do nothing but advisedly, promise nothing but as though about to perform it, weigh every word by reason and good faith? So old men love. Few crimes you know, father: we have sometimes quarrelled too, and made it up, and — what perhaps you do not think — have forsworn ourselves. What concern is it of a father's that lovers swear to believe one another? Nor is it the gods' concern.

2.11. There is no cause for you to plume yourself, wife, as though you were the first to sin: some woman has perished with her husband, some has perished for her husband; yet those every age will honour, every genius will celebrate. Bear, father-in-law, your good fortune. How great an example it costs you, and for how little! For the future we are made more careful, as you bid; we confess our error; it had escaped us, when we swore, that there was a third party who loved more: so, gods, may it ever be. Do you persist, father-in-law? Take back your daughter: I, who sinned, am worthy of punishment; why should I be a cause of disgrace to my wife, of childlessness to my father-in-law? I will depart from the city, I will flee, I will go into exile, and however I can I shall, wretched, bear my longing with a cruel patience. I would die, if I were the only one to die.

2.12. Naso, however, rarely declaimed controversiae, and none but ethical ones; he more gladly spoke suasoriae. All argumentation was a burden to him. He used words with no great licence except in his poems, in which he was not unaware of his faults, but loved them. This can be made plain by the fact that, being once asked by his friends to remove three lines, he asked in turn that he himself might except three, over which they should have no power. The condition seemed fair; they wrote down in secret those they wished removed, he those he wished kept safe: in both tablets were the same lines, of which Albinovanus Pedo, who was among the arbiters, used to relate that the first was: "the half-bull man and the half-man bull"; the second: "and cold Boreas and unfrozen Notus." From which it appears that the man of supreme genius lacked not judgement but will to curb the licence of his verses. He used to say that a face is sometimes the more comely for having some mole upon it.

3.1. THE LAW: A ravisher, unless he wins over within thirty days both his own father and the father of the woman he ravished, shall perish. THE THEME: A man ravished a maiden. He won over her father; he asks his own father; his father delays. — Tell me the truth, then; I will not weep. Why do you tremble, old age? Why, tongue, do you falter? Why, eyes, are you struck dumb? It is not yet the thirtieth day. Do you beg for your life? I gave it, and you have lost it. "You wish," he says, "your son to die." Do I wish you to die? No — your madness, that blind and rash desire, and, amid these, that other father of yours, who was won over too quickly. Why did that old man so quickly remit the wrong? Not even with a sadder face did he bear the storming of his daughter's chastity. I fear that what I hear may be true — that, by a new and unheard-of custom, the ravisher was won over to the marriage of the girl.

3.2. OF CESTIUS PIUS: That you may judge the better of the old man, I shall narrate of myself as a young man. I had a father of sound mind, neither so severe as to be cruel, nor so indulgent as to be incautious. I married the wife my father had bidden, and yet I repent of my marriage. Son, did I not often flare up, often relent, often give what I had refused? You yourself parcelled out the thirty days, that the father-in-law might have the first, the defendant the middle, the father the last. Not to recount all his vices from his earliest youth: he ravished a maiden, he accuses his father — and all within thirty days. Do you think I will promise the accuser what I refused the son? "I won him over," he says. Others say he won you over. In the middle days you accuse me. Why did you ravish a maiden, if you so gladly chose to live?

3.3. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: "I shall die," he says: do you even now threaten? Do you not yet entreat? "How long," he says, "shall I entreat?" You are already weary, and have not yet entreated anyone. "I cannot," he says, "win you over for so long." By a new custom he charges a madman with constancy. "What then? Will you be able to watch your son die?" Perhaps I shall not, and therefore I am angry while I may be. OF POMPEIUS SILO: This boldness of his is in part my own fault: he was reared too indulgently, he thinks all things lawful for him, he has never asked anything of me. "He has pardoned," he says. So has anyone been asked before me? You do not know the condition of your own law: in this offence, those who have equal votes perish. He sent himself to another's discretion; the law admitted him to mine. "Let the ravisher perish, unless he win over both his own father and the father of the ravished woman." Do you wish to know which the law preferred? Not to be won over: it is angry. Of his two fathers the ravisher accuses the one who follows the law.

3.4. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS: Do you wonder that I doubt? The law itself is in doubt between death and marriage. Why do you betray me, untimely tears? It was not yet the time for confessing. There is no cause for you to think my tears have promised you anything: I weep because I must watch my son die. What I shall do I still do not know; at any rate you will not know before the thirtieth day. "I won over," he says, "the father of the ravished woman." Why then are you troublesome to me, if that is enough for you? OF OSCUS: He broke down the doors and forced her, calling again and again upon the laws, to suffer outrage: unless he won over the girl as easily as her father. By outrage he deserved death; by accusing he begs it off; meanwhile the days are spent. Which of us spends them? "I entreat," he says. It is not my fortune to entreat; now it is I, who am in peril, that ought to have been entreated. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS.

3.5. I am mad. Of course I live basely, I love a harlot, I do not know the law, I do not count your days. To the judges he summons his own judge. "Then I shall die," he says. If you say this to a defendant, I do not care; if to a judge, I shall see; if to a madman, I do not understand. "You are mad," he says: and can anyone pardon a man who entreats thus? You are my judges; he has his own judge, and cannot complain that he is inexorable whom he has not yet tried.

3.6. OF JUNIUS GALLIO: "I entreat," he says. Now, here, thus? If you wished to entreat, you would have brought up kinsmen, friends, the images of your ancestors, tears, groans fetched from deep within. I call the gods to witness, I was prepared to entreat the girl's father thus. When you have lowered your unwilling face into a suppliant's posture, when you have said: "I repent that I ravished her, that I did not entreat you first"; when you have said you were mad, I shall deliberate with my friends, deliberate with my kinsmen, deliberate with your mother. Wretched me, how nearly I promised! Hold firm, my heart, hold firm; yesterday you were braver. And I have much to deliberate on; diverse feelings pull me apart, I am torn between defendant and son; on this side is the wrong, on that, nature. Why do you hurry? You have no one to entreat but me. "Then," he says, "will you have pity?" I shall promise nothing before the thirtieth day. Wretched me, that I can be angry for only thirty days! There was need of a longer time.

3.7. Hear from a madman examples for this charge: for ten and twenty years our youth has grown old amid wars; and can we not bear thirty days? I shall deliberate: the law wishes nothing to be done rashly; "it is a great matter," it says: deliberate, consider, take time. You broke into the house of a citizen — even, as you say, a merciful one. Die: this is not grievous to a guilty man; I have done no wrong: for your sake I long to die. A reason is demanded of me for another's fault, that lies in my power. "What then will you do?" I shall not pronounce before the last day. Why do you wonder if you won him over more quickly? It is easier to forgive a wrong than a crime. Come, into the open, old man, by whose pity I am made cruel: did you not think I should be deliberated with? Whence do you know what kind of son I have? I, at least, do not yet know what kind of daughter you have. No time is too narrow for a single word. "Now," he says, "the time is narrow": and have you leisure to accuse? OF VIBIUS RUFUS: Who, before me, was ever

3.8. bidden to pardon thus? "Now," he says, "the time is narrow." Do you not think, then, that I reckon how much is left? "Now," he says, "the time is narrow." It would be narrow, if you had to entreat two men. "The time is narrow," he cries, "I do not know when to entreat." Then you ought to have entreated me first: I do not say because I am worthier to be entreated first, because I am your father; this, which is the least of it — I live nearer. To this, of course, that part of the law pertained: "and let him win over his own father." OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS: Does anyone win over thus? Does anyone beg thus? It is plain that you are entreating now for the first time. I am mad: nay, if you want an argument, I will give you one: my son is going to die, and I have not yet changed my will. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: Many feelings draw me different ways: I must complain of some, blush for some, fear for some, and over all still deliberate. Not even that other man, though he is said to be too easily won over, would have pardoned, had he been entreated thus.

3.9. THE OTHER SIDE. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: Wretched me, father! Nothing has been taken from your anger, much from my time. I am unhappier than if I had won over neither: I fear death after all have congratulated me. What shall I pray for you, best of fathers-in-law, in return for that pity of yours, by which you spared both me and my father, but a surviving daughter? OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: I cannot dissemble, father: that I won him over is your kindness; certainly when he was won over he said this: my grief, indeed, advised otherwise, but what shall I do against my father's judgement? I have pity. Have pity, father: you know how brief my respite is. "I have pity," he says; do you wish me to tell the truth — what he said? "On your father." Whence should I, wretched, coming from this father, fear a father?

3.10. OF CESTIUS PIUS: I fear death, and now I have no one for whom to perish. OF MARULLUS: If your hatred toward me is so stubborn, declare boldly what you will do; say you cannot be won over. Why do you keep me hanging in the uncertain expectation of death? Anxious even in my sleep, I shudder as though the axe were brought to my neck. If I cannot obtain to live, let me at least obtain not to die long. There is no cause for you to think the law narrow in its number of days: it is his law to make me die long. Answer, father: if you mean to save your son, the time has already been; if to kill him, the time is now. I cannot bear the fear longer, nor suffer these torments for thirty days: and over myself I have some power. OF BLANDUS: Has it fallen to you so meanly, that you alone, when your son is in peril, do not entreat?

3.11. LATRO divided thus: whether within the thirtieth day the ravisher can go to law with anyone — just as one cannot who is in custody, who is in prison. Even if he can with another, whether he can with the father, to whom the choice of life or death is given: "is he free to accuse one whom not to have won over is deadly?" Even if he can go to law with the father, whether he can for that which the law has given the father power to do: "for by that reasoning nothing is lawful, if either to be won over or to be accused is unavoidable for him." Then, if he can go to law, whether he ought. He treated the causes of anger: that he ravished, that he entreated another first, that he did not entreat me, that he even accuses. If not to be won over by a son is madness, whether one can yet be condemned for madness, when it is still uncertain whether he will be won over. Here he treated a father's feelings, giving hope. He did not approve Fuscus, who pleaded a little too openly: it is against the controversia to promise. The father can nonetheless be played both as good and as not yet won over.

3.12. FABIANUS made this question, and dwelt much upon it: that an action for madness cannot lie except against one who rages from disease; for to this end the law was passed, that a father should be healed by his son, not ruled. Latro elegantly used to say that there are certain questions which ought to be reckoned among things already adjudged: such as, whether a brave man or a tyrant-slayer ought to receive whatever he chooses: since it has been pronounced that he ought not, no one now treats this question, just as no one treats that other — whether whatever a father commands ought to be done. Among these he thought was this one too: whether a father ought to be accused by his son for madness only when he rages from disease; for he said it was plain from the law both that the question is of a father's duty, and that certain controversiae are invented in which a father cannot be proved mad, and yet cannot be acquitted on account of too great impiety or foul lust. What then? he said, shall I never use this question?

3.13. I shall use it when I am at a loss for others. ASINIUS POLLIO used to say that Latro seemed to do this like a forensic pleader, in cutting away foolish questions, but that in nothing was he more caught out as a schoolman. He gives up, he said, that question which is always strongest for fathers. I know that no one is given a guardian by the praetor because his father is unjust or impious, but because he is mad; and that to seek a guardian in the forum is the same as to bring an action for madness in the school.

3.14. GALLIO used the earlier question and added this one: whether one can go to law against a father for madness for what he has done, not for what he is going to do. That no one is accused of injury because he is going to do an injury, nor of adultery because he is going to commit adultery, nor even of madness because he is going to be mad. "And yet you," he says, "do not go to law with me because you have not won me over, but because you are not going to win me over; for suppose I am won over today: I shall not be mad. Do I seem mad, who can be healed by a single word? The law gave thirty days, because it judged that someone might be harsher. Even if he is mad who is not won over by his son, is he so on the twentieth day too? Therefore you cannot condemn me on the ground that I have not been won over; for even now I can be won over. So, if you want the truth, you cannot go to law with me on this charge; at any rate, for thirty days I can be won over; after thirty days you cannot complain: either I have no crime or I have no accuser."

3.15. SILO POMPEIUS made the question GALLIO used, and added: the young man will accomplish nothing, even if he condemns his father; for he will perish nonetheless, since the law gave the ravisher no other way of safety than if he won over his father. Latro treated all these as limbs bearing upon some question, not as a question; just as this very point, he said, bears upon that question in which it is asked whether the ravisher can accuse his father within the thirtieth day. "For when I say: you cannot accuse one in whose discretion it is placed whether you die or live, any more than you can summon a magistrate to court, or pass sentence on your own judges, or any more than a soldier can pass judgement on his own general — I add: you cannot accuse; for it will profit you nothing, even if you condemn; you will die; for the law wishes you to perish unless you win him over; and you do not win him over even if you condemn." Why did he not place this in the position of a question?

3.16. He thought it weak. For it appears that the law does not require him to win over a father who has no one to win over. For suppose someone's father is so openly mad that he understands nothing: does the law wish him to be won over by his son? And yet a manifest madman is in the same position. FUSCUS thought this not strong enough as a question, strong enough as an argument; and that other question — that one cannot go to law with a father on the ground that he has not sinned but is going to sin — he placed in the treatment of equity, when he said: even if you can bring an action against me for madness, you ought not. For what wrong have I done? I have not been won over: the time has not yet passed, I can still be won over. How unjust it is that I am not yet guilty, and already a defendant!

3.17. All defamed the father of the ravished woman as colluding with the ravisher. GALLIO said: he ravished a freeborn maiden — if, that is, he ravished her at all. SILO POMPEIUS turned the same suspicion upon everything: "I won over," he said, "the father of the ravished woman." So then — when she had an easily-won father, you ravished her? HISPANUS said: everything was done quickly: this man quickly ravished, that one quickly forgave. Unless I am mad, something is to be suspected. ARGENTARIUS said: she was ravished and at once won over; nay, I am not sure whether she was won over first, then ravished. I hope you were more innocent than you wish to seem. You say you won him over; I think you were won over. Tell me, what did you arrange with your father-in-law? OF VIBIUS RUFUS: Tell me what you arranged, for how much he promised you the marriage. You will not?

3.18. Then, by Hercules, you will confess when the day comes. ASPRENAS said: "Now," he says, "not much is left of the thirty days"; if I counted the days from that point when you first won him over, they say thirty days have already passed. Latro said what is written among the epigrams: "I shall die"; tell the truth, then. CESTIUS declaimed with this figure, so as to entreat his father, as though the father of the ravished woman had been won over; then he passed to this epigram: have I a worse cause, if I have won before another judge? With the same figure HISPO ROMANIUS too declaimed, but passed over more softly: I know what can be answered me: it is easy to satisfy a household judge; I shall see to you, when you come to the father of the ravished woman.

3.19. In this controversia TRIARIUS had said: you will not know whether you win me over, unless the last day comes; and then, as long as it is allowed, I shall persist. Then, with the schoolmen's greatest uproar: but you, whoever you are, executioner, when you have raised the drawn axe, before you strike, look back at his father. Prettily ASINIUS POLLIO mocked this: let the son, he said, stretch out his neck, let the executioner raise his hand, then look back at the father, and say: shall I do it? — as is the custom with victims. But, jest aside too, he said a most true thing: that the executioner cannot come except at the time when the father can no longer be won over.

3.20. CESTIUS, on the other side, used this colour, because he had entreated the father of the ravished woman first: I did not wish him to be in suspense, I wished him to be at once at ease about me; he complains that I wished him to think rather of his son's marriage than of his peril. Latro used this colour: you know that men in peril act by another's discretion. Those companions who were around me, the friends of my father who had come to me, kept saying: let us go at once to the father of the ravished woman; in such a case those men are entreated; for the fathers of ravishers do the entreating.

3.21. SILO POMPEIUS followed a colour opposite to this: the harshness of my father was well known, he said; and so my friends advised that we go to the father of the ravished woman, lest it harm us with him that his own father was won over too slowly. HISPO ROMANIUS used a pretty colloquialism. "Day has dawned," he said, "friends; let us go to the father of the ravished woman; let us hurry, the other is at home." FUSCUS ARELLIUS said: the one more feared was entreated first. TRIARIUS, on the young man's side, said: I fear he may change, even though he has been won over. This thought SILO POMPEIUS not imprudently disapproved; for he said that a sentence once passed cannot be changed.

3.22. Some wished it to seem that the father of the ravished woman was won over quickly, some slowly. FUSCUS ARELLIUS said: I have consumed a great part of the law's time, and I do not complain of the delay: the father of the ravished woman was being entreated. CESTIUS did not approve this, and used this epigram in censuring the colour: while he wishes it to seem that the father of the ravished woman was long entreated, he brings it about that he seems to have been slow in entreating his own; but I would rather it seem that this man's father is slowly won over, than slowly entreated. HERMAGORAS was wont sometimes to pursue figures at length, sometimes to touch them briefly and more forcibly, as he did in this epigram, when he wished to raise a suspicion of collusion between the father of the ravished woman and the ravisher: "He has been won over," he says, "the father of the ruined girl, very quickly indeed: almost before the ruin."

3.23. ARTEMON said: "Tell me, what have you arranged with the father of the ruined girl? Tell me, how have you won him over? Are you silent? You are caught." GLYCON said: "If you pity me slowly, how will you save me? . . . a care chillier than death, I will not await your pity." This thought LEPIDUS, Nero's teacher, expressed more aptly: do you not have pity except on the last day? I shall have pity on myself before. DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS, on the father's side, spoke ethically: "Shall I then die? Die: for to what end did you ravish? To what end . . . ? To what end did you rage? And these things, too, either after setting an ambush, or some such thing."

4.1. THE THEME: A man had two sons. One of them, having a child by a harlot, fell sick. The father came to him at the harlot's house. The dying son commended his child to his father, who took up the child. He is accused of madness by his other son. OF PORCIUS LATRO: What a woman I saw! She herself performed the offices, busy about the sick man's bed, running to every service, her hair not merely loosened but torn. Where, I said, is the harlot? Someone came to me suddenly to say: your son, before he dies, asks you to come. I did not wait for this man's leave: out of my senses, I ran. The rest, how I am to relate, I do not know: whether I stood or sat, what I said, what I heard, I do not know; this one thing I know — that I lay between my two sons. Come here, boy, my charge, my crime; I have, wretch that I am, no one to whom, when dying, I may commend you. OF CESTIUS PIUS: I took my grandson into my bosom.

4.2. Do you wish me to disinherit him too? I raised two sons; to that number I am now used. He accuses his father, defames his brother, persecutes an infant: I ask you, is it not better to love a harlot than no one? It is a madness of a new kind I am charged with: I should be sane if I did not acknowledge my own. He handed me the child and breathed his last; I had no one to whom to give it back. I offered myself to my kinsmen, I waited for someone to entreat for the disinherited man: none of the kinsmen dared, while the brother held back; they, of course, kept silent in this thought: shall we entreat, when the brother does not dare? "You have taken in," he says, "the son of a harlot": yes — of her who had taken in mine. I confess I was once mad: I did not know which son was to be disinherited; I cast out the better one.

4.3. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: How little of a harlot's life I saw in that house! The woman sat by, with a sad face, afflicted, herself most like a sick person, her eyes cast down to the ground. "Father," he said, "did my brother say nothing to you?" Into my bosom he laid both his son and his soul. I carried it home. He calls it madness that I did not disinherit the infant. What was I to do? Refuse a son something, when he was entreating me for his son? I forgive you for being so hard: you did not see your sick brother. He, but lately born the successor of a great patrimony, was dying on a borrowed cot; no crowd of slaves stood about him, no crowd of friends; between an infant and a poor little woman the failing young man's breath was held back until I came. As I entered, he raised his already drooping eyes at my name, and held back his fleeing soul. "Father," he said, "that I have entreated for nothing till now I did not do from obstinacy; I had entrusted it to my brother." I will declare my crimes to you: I wished to call back to life your dying co-heir; I prayed the gods that he might be safe, and — though you call it madness — had he lived, I should have taken him in.

4.4. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: I was the more at ease, since I had thought his brother furnished him with everything, when suddenly it was announced that my son was at his last — and this not from his brother. O wretched me, that I have taken in my only grandson! OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: When he saw his wife, when he saw his father, he was looking round even for his brother. OF JULIUS BASSUS: To you, woman, I owe it that my son had a house in which to be sick. I am ashamed to say it: I was entreated to acknowledge my grandson. Madness cannot be understood from a single fault. No one is without a vice: in Cato moderation is wanting, in Cicero constancy, in Sulla clemency. In sum, we were three, we all sinned: I in that I disinherited, my son in that he kept silent, you in that you did not entreat for your brother. I am not content with one heir, I wish to have two, and — that I may covet it the more — I have had two. He sent for me, my affectionate son, when sick. Shall I not go? Believe me, you hear otherwise about a co-heir. Consider who entreats, for whom he entreats, whom he entreats; you will see that no one could refuse, save one who could also accuse his father.

4.5. THE OTHER SIDE. OF PORCIUS LATRO: One whom the harlot more honourably substituted than bore. This man's father is uncertain; it would be well with him, if his mother too. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: He is mistaken who thinks I am moved by money. First, I am used to having a co-heir; next, long since I have already divided the paternal estate with that boy, because his father gave him much more than his own share. OF ROMANIUS HISPO: He fell in with a harlot who, among all her other evils, was even fertile. Truly a mime wedding, in which the rival came into the bedchamber before the husband. OF ARGENTARIUS: When he was disinheriting, he kept saying: shall I, of course, wait until you raise children by a harlot? The woman is, I am not sure whether, the more injurious to the father in that you took an heir from him, or in that you gave him one.

4.6. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: Let friends come there, let kinsmen come: now they blush to enter a harlot's house. Woman — you who cannot honourably be named without a prefatory apology — give up that home-born slave, to be acknowledged by no one; but let the mother claim him. A most severe father disinherited even the son he knew to be his own. There was in the house a boy who called everyone "father." He adopted the son of the woman for whose sake he had even cast out his own. OF CESTIUS PIUS: I refuse no kind of judges: if they are severe, it will harm him that he took in a harlot's son; if merciful, that he disinherited his own. The father cried out: shall a harlot then come into my house, or — what is baser — her son? He went to her, he sent a public child into our house. Who was present at that wedding, but a man disinherited or to be disinherited?

4.7. Latro divided thus: whether a father can be accused for any adoption, whether he ought to be for this one. All defamed the young man, as though by his slanders it had come about that his brother was disinherited; and so this epigram of FABIANUS is praised: I said nothing to you. And since this one thing harms the boy — that he was born of a harlot — all took pains, as far as the controversia allowed, to heal this fault and bring it about that nothing in her should seem to have been a harlot's but the name. MARULLUS said this becomingly, at the same time charging the brother with impiety: nothing, he said, in that house was a harlot's:

4.8. you would know it, had you been with me. ALBUCIUS spoke ethically, as many think — at least it was praised when he said: as I went out, the boy followed me. Messala did not approve this epigram: he has no confidence, he said, if he prefers to seem to have taken in the boy rather than to have brought him; by which reasoning the boy was adopted not because he ought to have been, but because he followed. Now Messala was of a most exacting talent in all branches of study, and at any rate a most diligent observer of the Latin tongue; and so, when he had heard Latro declaiming, he said: he is eloquent in his own language. He granted him talent, he objected to his diction. Latro did not bear this insult, and against Messala's most eloquent speech for Pythodorus he recited one equally well-composed, and declaimed the suasoria on Theodotus for three days. What he said I shall render in its place, when I come to the suasoriae.

4.9. On the young man's side not one colour pleased all. Some introduced his character such as they had received it, hard and harsh, among whom was ROMANIUS HISPO: he said this one thing must be brought about — that he should seem not hard but severe. In this part he spoke that famous epigram which Fabius Maximus used to carry about: a harlot comes constantly into the house, she does not depart, she is but little short of being a stepmother. CESTIUS pleaded with a pretty figure: "madness," he said, "is a thing contrary to sanity. I shall not seek outside, from the example of a sane man, a standard to which to hold the father: I shall compare him with himself. He was once sane: what then was he doing? He hated luxury, he chastised vices. Will you think this so severe an old man sane, if I show him to you in a brothel?" So he declaimed as to give the brother his father for accuser, and to convict him by comparing him with himself.

4.10. Latro spared the brother; he pressed the boy, and said he was not the son of the brother, and that not even the brother had wished to confess this; that those words were imposed upon a sick man. FABIANUS, of all these, followed the best colour, by which Messala said the young man's cause could be made not only good but even honourable: he charged the father with having disinherited the brother — not by a figure but directly. "He had done no wrong," he said; "he loves a harlot; it is wont to happen: he is young, wait, he will mend, he will take a wife." Why then did you not bring an action for madness at that time? "I was waiting," he said, "for your repentance; he will take him back soon." This he began to object in passing — that he had not taken him in, when he saw him living in a brothel. "You disinherited him," he said, "to mend him, not to increase his vices. You see, no vice of his:

4.11. it belongs to his age, it belongs to love: take him back before he does something for shame of which he may soon die." At the last he objected to him that he had not carried his sick brother home with him. "He can," he said, "recover, if he sees his own household gods; or if not, at least he will die on his father's soil, his own, untainted. Why," he says, "were you not at your brother's?" I too complain of it. He, when he sent for you, thought he was sending for two. Would that I had been with you, father; you would have come back from there with a son — but your own." Of the adoption he complained last, and with this figure: you have taken from me the brother with whom I was born, with whom I was reared — to give me whom? This boy. I am indignant that this insult is offered to my brother — that this child should be called his father. But, to jest a little, FABIUS MAXIMUS was a most noble man, who first brought into the Roman forum this new-fangled disease from which it now suffers; of whom SEVERUS CASSIUS, before he was prosecuted by him, had said: you are as-if eloquent, as-if handsome, as-if rich; one thing only you are not "as-if" — a wastrel.

4.12. When MAXIMUS declaimed this controversia, he spoke a tricolon of the kind that infects the basilica. He was speaking on the father's side: we have all brought you something in our weakness, one the burden of another: a father is accused in his last years, a grandson in his first, one son is disinherited. These things I relate now and again because examples of things to be avoided ought to be set down as much as of things to be followed. In this controversia Latro said something contrary not to the controversia, but to himself. He was declaiming it in the hearing of Caesar Augustus and of Marcus Agrippa, whose sons — his own grandsons, Lucius and Gaius — Caesar seemed in those days about to adopt. Marcus Agrippa was among those who were not born noble but made so.

4.13. When Latro was speaking the young man's part and treating the commonplace on adoption, he said: now this man, from the lowest, is grafted by adoption into nobility; and other things to this effect. Maecenas signalled to Latro that Caesar was in haste; let him now end his declamation. Some thought this was malice on Maecenas's part; for he brought it about not that Caesar should not hear what had been said, but that he should mark it. Yet so great was the freedom under the deified Augustus, that there were men not lacking who reproached Marcus Agrippa — then all-powerful — with his low birth. He had been Vipsanius Agrippa, but had dropped the name Vipsanius as though it were a proof of his father's lowliness, and was called Marcus Agrippa. When he was defending a defendant, there was an accuser who said: "Agrippa — Marcus and what is between" — he wished Vipsanius to be understood — "come together: Agrippa, you shall have a thrashing; answer, if you please, Marcus." At any rate the deified Augustus seems to me worthy of admiration, under whom so much was permitted; but I cannot pity these men who think it worth more to lose their head than their jest. Latro deserved pity, who could not even excuse his slip. And nothing is crueller than to give offence in such a way that you will give more offence if you make amends.

5.1. THE THEME: A tyrant ordered a wife to be tortured to make her reveal her husband's plans against him. She kept silent. Afterwards her husband killed the tyrant. He divorced his wife, who had not borne children within five years, and is accused of ingratitude. OF PORCIUS LATRO: If she had been tortured along with her children, she would have revealed it. "Go up," she said, "kill the tyrant; if you do not kill him, I will reveal it." Suddenly a guard, laying hands on her, said: why do you delay? The instruments of torture are already set out. It is well, said the woman, I am not summoned to outrage. Daily the wife pressed her husband, demanded the tyrant's death: "it is time; go up; if for nothing else, that you may have children: I will not bear except to a tyrant-slayer. Do you wonder that I could not bear at the time when a tyrant could torture a matron? Go up, kill the tyrant; I would follow you as companion, had not the tyrant dismissed me useless. Go up: I have already done my own tyrant-slaying." That marriage was divorced by the tyrant-slaying which the tyrant did not divorce.

5.2. OF CESTIUS PIUS: Suddenly the tyrant fell upon an unhappy wedding. Matrons were dragged off, maidens ravished; nothing was safe; none seemed then more fortunate than those who had no children. And so some women crushed the children they had conceived, some delayed their own fertility. As to this woman, do you give thanks to Fortune, that at that time she bore nothing? The tyrant suspected this man of some thought of tyrant-slaying — whether something slipped from him, or his face did not well veil his great designs. At any rate you cannot complain of your wife's chattering, since you know how she keeps silent. He sent his guards: "drag off," he said, "his wife, and," he added, "any children she has."

5.3. There come into the house the cruellest executioners, in whose faces were the tortures: the wretched woman is tossed about among the hands of the guards, and through the whole journey is not led but dragged. Will anyone wonder that she did not bear — even were she not tortured — when this man was thinking of tyrant-slaying? Boldly now we declare the plan; for now, I think, it is allowed. She married this man for children, but the tyrant quickly fell upon the unhappy wedding; this was a public divorce. The woman is dragged off to the citadel, harried among the hands of the guards and torn. Will anyone wonder, even were she not tortured, that she did not bear? Set on the rack, she looked back more often to her absent husband than to the present tyrant. How many mothers I heard at that time: what did I want, who have borne?

5.4. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS: The apparatus of cruelty against the unhappy woman are unfolded, and those instruments, which break even men's spirits by the very sight, are set forth to wring out the secret of a woman's heart; the tyrant presses first with threats rather than tortures, and tortures by threatening: she is silent. She sees the tyrant's intent face, she sees his menacing eyes: she is silent. She could not have done you more service, had she borne children to you. Her limbs are cut with scourges, her body is torn apart with blows, and blood is wrung from her very vitals: she is silent. Whether she would have given you children I do not know; she gave you a tyrant-slaying. So then, woman, will you not bear? You are dainty, you fear the pangs of childbirth. The husband raged with indignation at the captured state, made braver both by his own resolve and by his wife's help: how shall I kill the tyrant? Which part is most exposed to one approaching? Where do the guards fail? Where does the nature of the place, with a weaker defence, not bar valour? Thus did husband and wife spend their nights. Do you wonder that five years passed, with the wife tortured and the husband busy? The tyrant still raged; wives were tortured before their husbands' eyes; mothers repented of their fertility.

5.5. OF ROMANIUS HISPO: For what did you long for children? That there might be those to whom you could leave your patrimony? Ingrate — so, while she is safe, have you no heir? He omitted no kind of torture; all her limbs were mangled, wrenched in every direction, her body cut with scourges, burned with fire, racked with tortures. You will pardon, I think, a poor little woman if I say: she is weary. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS: He hung back, nor could be driven by any exhortations to tyrant-slaying. In short, when you had seen his wife, you could pardon a man who was afraid. The tortures were constantly varied; the quenched fires were rekindled; the torturer was called for, under whom husbands had betrayed their wives. Suppose I make a bargain with you: if I keep silent, will you grant me five years? Why do you boast, as though it were not easier to kill a tyrant than to endure this? He is bound by a double benefit from his wife: both that he was not killed, and that he killed. He loathes as barren the woman he made so. OF JUNIUS GALLIO.

5.6. The tyrant pressed: torture; that part too can bear it; apply fires: in that part the blood is already dried up; cut, scourge, tear out the eyes, see to it now that she does not please her husband — her womb. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: I shall now describe the torments and the wretched endurance of the body amid the tyrannical tortures raging: the quenched fires were revived with blood; sometimes the torturing was broken off only that it might be repeated the oftener. Choice scourges, hot plates, the rack, whatever ancient cruelty had devised, whatever the new age had added — what more shall I say? The tyrant both tortured and, in tortuting, inquired about tyrant-slaying. O happy we! Because she had been drained by no childbearings, she kept silent. Then by her silence she did the tyrant-slaying — at any rate she made the tyrant-slayer. Her limbs torn and mangled, and not yet sufficing, she was not dismissed from the citadel,

5.7. but flung out. What reason have you for divorcing your wife? Does she burden your fortune, costly in her expenditure, and, as is the fashion of the age, does a woman's ambition, as luxury flows ever for the worse, in mutual rivalry run mad with private extravagance even to public harm? Did she covet gems and little stones sought from a foreign shore, and gold and clothing that will cover nothing in a matron? If she were such, the tyrant would easily have corrupted her. Wait, she can bear; fertility does not answer to a set plan nor to a fixed day; the nature of things is its own master and is not arranged by human laws: sometimes it hurries and outruns our prayers, sometimes it is slow and delays. Wait; she will bear. What do you say: "it cannot be"? Why? Because she was tortured. You lay it to her charge that she became public property; you lay it to her charge that she was tortured; you lay it to her charge that she is barren. OF JULIUS BASSUS: The tyrant said: burn, cut her womb.

5.8. OF ARGENTARIUS: Cut her womb, that she may not bear tyrant-slayers. OF TRIARIUS: Nature does not answer to a formula, nor does chance obey a prescription; fortune always prefers to be awaited rather than ruled. In one place an unforeseen ripening of the crops gives offence, in another a late delay is redeemed at great interest. Though the law fix the days, nature does not admit it. The tyrant said: reveal it; it is no fault of yours: she is silent. She is cut: she is silent; she is burned: she is silent. Which do you think is to be wondered at — your tyrant-slaying, or her silence? Some woman is said to have waited a long time for her husband: how great is the praise of having saved him, when to have waited was so great? Another, struck with longing for her husband, threw herself upon his burning pyre: would this woman not have burned with her husband, who burned for her husband? Another, for her husband's safety, died in his stead by a substituted death: do you believe this woman was overcome by tortures? She would have suffered death besides for her husband, had the tyrant demanded anything more. OF MARCELLUS.

5.9. If, however, she had sinned in childbearing, it could be pardoned her; for she had married a busy man. You are crueller even than the tyrant you killed: he tortured, but sent her back to her husband. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS: Endurance had conquered cruelty; the blood now failed, the loyalty remained. At last she was flung out; she was abandoned with her hands wrenched, her joints dislocated; her limbs had not yet returned to their own members. Such a wife the torturer sent back to childbearing. He was called ungrateful because in his reward he made no mention of his wife. "Keep your things to yourself." He ought to have laid hands on him and dragged the man himself among her things; you owe a father nothing more than you owe a wife. Believe me, it was a greater thing to suffer the tyrant-slaying than to do it.

5.10. THE OTHER SIDE. OF ARGENTARIUS: "And yet I was tortured." You might justly object it, had I not avenged it. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS: With you, judges, I speak . . . THE DIVISION. The first question to make the defendant guilty in this controversia, if the material permit: "I did not receive . . . indeed, but I returned it"; or "I received it indeed, but could not return it"; or to flee at last to this: "not whoever has not returned a benefit is liable for ingratitude. The mind of the one who does not return must be weighed." ASINIUS POLLIO used to say that these questions should never be attempted unless the first could be manifestly maintained, by which we deny that we received a benefit; the whole case is lost, unless he wins on this point. For it is plain that a man is ungrateful who does not even confess that he received the benefit.

5.11. Our GALLIO thinks that, whenever one can, this should be taken from the adversary; whenever one cannot, it should be shaken; whenever one cannot do even this, it should be passed over as though we grant it and could indeed make a controversia of it, but do not wish to. The same view pleased ATTICUS VIPSANIUS, a pupil of Apollodorus. This he added: whenever, he said, we cannot make a controversia of whether we received a benefit, let us make one of the degree: that it is not so great as he says — just as we do in criminal charges, whenever we cannot deny: we confess the crime indeed, but as worthy of a lighter penalty than the accuser alleges.

5.12. Latro in this controversia did not hesitate to make the first question, whether he gave a benefit. This he divided thus: even if you knew and did not reveal, it is no benefit not to commit a crime; and then, you did not even know; for I did not reveal it to you, nor did I entrust so great a design — grievous even to manly minds — to a woman's chattering, which can keep silent only about what it does not know. Even if he did give a benefit, whether he received one in return. I killed the tyrant, I restored your liberty, I pursued the fullest vengeance, I killed the abominable enemy there where he had tortured. You will say I did it for the republic's sake: and you kept silent for the republic's sake. Let him be safe for what he did by law. Then the last treatment of equity:

5.13. whether what he did, he ought to have done. This he divided into two: whether he ought to have borne the now-certain barrenness of so good a wife; whether she is even certainly barren. The modern declaimers, after Moschus the Apollodorean — who was prosecuted for poisoning and defended by Asinius Pollio, and, condemned, taught at Massilia — made this question too in this controversia: whether benefits given between husbands and wives are liable to the law of ingratitude. It is no benefit but a duty, to do what you owe: so a son might say he confers a benefit on his father. This question our GALLIO too made. BLANDUS, in the last part of the controversia, where the matter of the republic is disputed, made the question whether the five years ought to be reckoned, the tyranny excepted. That time ought not to be charged against her as barren, in which mothers cursed even the children they had borne: let that time be charged against women in which they bear for the republic, not the time in which they bear for a tyrant. To this he subjoined, whether, even if the time of tyranny is usually charged against others, it ought not to be against this woman.

5.14. Latro, in his usual way, thought these were not questions, but limbs of that last part hanging from the question of equity. Whether she is even barren he fetched from deeper: not every woman who has not borne in five years is barren. For what? If someone's husband has been away almost the whole five years, it will be charged to the husband's absence abroad. What if the husband was sick? If this husband, tortured by the tyrant, had lain useless for intercourse with his own wife, would he charge the five years to her? You ask why she did not bear? It was tyranny; everyone complained to his own parents that he had been born. Here, because she was tortured; here, because the husband, busy with tyrant-slaying, had no leisure for his wife's pleasure.

5.15. BUTEO, a dry declaimer indeed, but a prudent divider of controversiae, held the contrary to Latro and agreed with Blandus. For it is one thing, he said, to say "she who has not borne within five years is not necessarily barren," another to say "she who has not borne within five years cannot at once be put away under the name of barrenness." Here the inquiry is about a condition of law, there about a hope of fertility. But he found fault with Blandus too; he said the inquiry should not have been made thus: whether the time of tyranny ought to be excepted; and then, even if not in others, whether in this woman . . . there should be a gradation. He himself divided the question in this part thus: whether any woman who has not borne in five years can be put away as barren.

5.16. There could happen what happened to the Athenians in war — that children and wives be deposited in some safer place: will this time be charged against women, in which they do not abandon their husbands but do not have them? What if the tyrant had forbidden this woman to bear within the five years? And when he had filled this out vehemently and proved that not all could be put away if they had not borne in five years, then he passed to this: whether this woman could be; and even here he still did not ask whether she ought to be put away, but whether she could. And this he said against Latro: how do you think this question falls under the treatment of equity, when the inquiry is what is lawful, not what is fitting? For this — whether she can — I fill out through those points: she cannot, because she had not conceived in the tyranny. Misery makes some time exempt from the laws. I do not say it is because she was tortured — this I still pass over and reserve for the treatment of equity. But she did not bear because you, occupied with the thought of so great a matter, gave no thought to children.

5.17. PASSIENUS, a most eloquent man and the first orator of his time, did not approve this subtlety of pleading: he said he agreed with Latro for this reason — that all these things would always have to be treated for their own sake, if this woman were bringing an action for unjust divorce; but as it is she brings one for ingratitude: so the inquiry is not whether she was lawfully, but whether she was ungratefully, put away; and so even matters of law fall under the treatment of equity. For when the inquiry is whether this woman ought not to have been put away even if it was lawful, it appears how much she ought not to have been put away, if it was not even lawful. And so ALBUCIUS acted most becomingly — for he was generally wont to arrange a declamation into certain figures — and pleaded first for unjust divorce, then for ingratitude: . . . he thinks . . . any benefit, by whom she was, as it were, unjustly put away. Hence he treated freely all the questions pertaining to barrenness and the reckoning of the five years, then passed into the accusation of ingratitude. CESTIUS introduced a simple colour for the husband:

5.18. at the time my wife was tortured I was as yet thinking nothing of tyrant-slaying; afterwards I thought of it, and this very thing was my reason for thinking — the avenging of my wife. He pursued both points: that she could not charge her husband with her silence, and that the husband could charge her with the tyrant-slaying. Latro said that he had been thinking of tyrant-slaying even then, but had not revealed it to his wife. FABIANUS the philosopher introduced a colour more befitting a good man than a cunning orator. For he said that he had both thought of tyrant-slaying and revealed it to his wife, and that she at that time did what an honest woman ought to do, but now sins in thinking it a benefit to do right. This colour profited him in that other part too: if you think you gave a benefit in not betraying the tyrant-slaying, I gave one first in entrusting the tyrant-slaying to you. The divorce . . . from your . . . desire for children, which he ought always to have used as a husband, afterwards more as a tyrant-slayer.

5.19. LUCIUS VINICIUS, the brother of Vinicius, strongly approved Fabianus's colour, and said the wife could be burdened in one way only — if the husband had never had any secret from her. If he says, he remarked, that he thought of tyrant-slaying after the tortures, then we owe the tyrant-slaying to the wife. She deserved better of her husband if, tortured, she made him a tyrant-slayer, than if she kept silent; but it appears he had thought something of tyrant-slaying, of which the tyrant suspected him so far as to torture him. If he says that he did indeed think of tyrant-slaying before the tortures, but did not reveal it to his wife, he will increase his wife's benefit; for she could the more freely reveal a tyrant-slaying that had not been entrusted to her; for the wife could detect the contriving of so great a design even without her husband revealing it. But if I follow this colour of Fabianus's, I shall accomplish much. If I have long thought of tyrant-slaying, I am more honourable, an old tyrant-slayer, driven to vengeance not by private but by public ills. If, when I was thinking of it, I did not conceal it from my wife, I shall more easily persuade men that I am no bad husband today, to whom I was always so devoted. At the last I shall attain this — that if she kept silent about what she had heard, it is no benefit but fidelity.

5.20. This is the Lucius Vinicius than whom no Roman citizen had a readier talent in pleading causes: whatever long reflection was to furnish him, the first effort of his mind gave; he pleaded cases extempore, but did not need this recommendation — to seem to plead extempore. Of him the deified Augustus elegantly said: Lucius Vinicius has his talent in ready cash. HISPO ROMANIUS, maliciously and like an accuser, said: "I had told this man nothing; she, as was inevitable, suspected something from his face, something from his nightly wakefulness: whence the talk leaked out, you shall know. You see where the tyrant comes: not to my friend, not to my slave, but to this woman, who would have had no trouble, had she kept silent. You kept silent for your own sake too: you knew you would perish, if you confessed the tyrant-slaying." HYBREAS said: "Go up, then, advancing to the citadel, and, if you so desire, take now the sword."

6.1. THE THEME: A father, himself luxurious, accuses his luxurious son. — Yet let the luxury of each be compared. You consume your father's patrimony; I, my accuser's. Sail, serve as a soldier, travel abroad, get as a young man, enjoy as an old. My accuser has feelings diverse and contrary to each other: he longs for the defendant to be condemned, and the charge to be acquitted. OF CESTIUS PIUS: We can agree; we are alike. Suppose yourself the father: say what you would have me do: if then you are honestly frugal, this too I imitate. Do I imitate you, or you me? I ask you, which began first? "You are luxurious," he says. Let us reckon up the patrimony. "But you are old," he says. This is what you say: your luxury began later, it will end sooner.

6.2. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS THE FATHER: "But you," he says, "are old." How do you know you will not be a luxurious old man? Every vice is from you: that my hair drips with unguent is yours; that my toga is let down looser, right to the feet, is yours. What else is there that old men learn from you? And further: does our house not hold two luxurious men? I could not disinherit you more indulgently. May I not refresh my old years with a better life? This is my last service, and the one I most lay to your charge: for your sake I have even become luxurious. OF FABIANUS: Do not covet money. What shall I tell you? This is what increases discord, drives cities and the whole world to war, goads the human race, kin by nature, into frauds and crimes and mutual hatred; this is what corrupts old men. Some have said the highest good is pleasure and referred everything to the body. I have no need of instructors: I have an example, I have set before me to do whatever you do; I will sail if you sail, serve if you serve: say today what you think better. But I make this reservation: you shall not object to what you yourself have chosen. OF BLANDUS: He objects luxury; I might say to him: young man, I lived frugally as long as I had a father. You stopped before me, you had begun before me. OF BLANDUS.

6.3. "As an old man you are luxurious." I answer you: as a young man I sailed. "I," he says, "have already stopped, you not yet." I do not wonder if you stopped first; you had begun first. OF MENTO: Whatever joy you have received . . . truly I am luxurious. OF POMPEIUS SILO: If only my son is reformed — for luxury too can be feigned — let each be a defendant in his own order. Do you wish me to take a wife? If you had a stepmother, you would already have been disinherited. OF VIBIUS GALLUS: Your guests, at least, say: let us drink, we must die. If I understand it, this is said to no one in the house more than to me. I have shown you your own vices, which you did not see in yourself. Bind me, while you guard yourself. OF PUBLIUS ASPRENAS: Because I made no headway by rebuking, I wished to show him his own life. OF JUNIUS OTHO: I should have a bad cause, if I had another accuser; I should have a bad cause, if I had not you for a son.

6.4. THE OTHER SIDE. OF JUNIUS GALLIO: I shall begin from the father's praises. He was a most temperate young man and passed that slippery time without disgrace; he took a wife, raised a son, brought him to manhood. He is already become an old man, save that he does not yet seem so to himself; his luxury has gone so far that I accuse him. An old man in love, an old man drunk, wreathed with garlands and anointed with unguents, driving himself back into past years and revelling more lustily in pleasures than a youth — is this not a portent? A luxurious young man sins; but a luxurious old man is mad; his age is drained, his vices run wanton. OF PAPIRIUS FABIANUS: You sink your ship in harbour. The one slips at the usual time, the other at the unusual; the one at another's expense, the other at his own; the one follows his years, the other fights against old age. Your luxury is not what you wish it to seem: you do not feign these things, but do them; you do not play the lover, but love; you do not sketch the drinker, but drink; you do not unteach the squandering of goods, but squander them. No one, I think, imitates the vices he hates. What general flees from battle himself, that his army may fight well? Who, to repress bribery, has himself bought offices? Who, to soothe sedition, has thrown the republic into disorder? He does not check vices who provokes them.

6.5. Latro divided thus: whether a father can be accused on this ground. Here he placed that common question which he was wont to disdain: namely, that this is by no means usually objected to a father; that luxury is no more objected than avarice, than irascibility; that not a father's vices are usually accused, but his disease. Whether, so that something besides madness may be objected to a father, luxury may not be. "Otherwise," he says, "you allow sons to disinherit." Here he spends from his own store. Even if a father can be accused on this ground, whether he can by such a son. Here the reproach of vices. So you object drunkenness to your father, drunk; so wantonness, having been condemned for an injury. Even if he can be accused on this ground, even by such a son, whether, if he used this device to chastise his son, he is to be condemned. For the young man says: you ought to have rebuked me by any other means. What if you wished to avenge adultery by committing it? It is base to chastise vices in such a way as to imitate them. Then, whether he is luxurious by design. For the son does not grant this: "otherwise," he says, "why, if you began to mend your son thus, do you not stop now that you had mended him?"

6.6. CESTIUS, on the father's side, used to say that the pretence of luxury should be hinted at rather than professed. Thus, he said, it will appear that he was pretending, if he is still pretending now; if he stops pretending, he shows that he now has no need of that device, as though his son were reformed; but he did not grant that the son was reformed, and constantly said that he feared nothing more than this interval of luxury; that interrupted vices rise the more violently. Latro thought the pretence should be openly confessed. I begin, he said, to defend not only an honourable old man but a prudent one, if I make what could seem a vice into a device. Why should he hint, rather than say, that he is frugal? BLANDUS declaimed the son with this figure, and answered for the disinherited man.

6.7. CESTIUS used to say that the young man's part should be coloured more carefully: that he does a thing not blameworthy; for thus he does not remit to his father what was remitted to him by his father. And so he narrated in such a way as to charge his own luxury too to his father: that the discipline had not been severe, that there was no rule of a well-ordered house, such as could shape a young man's character and lead him away from the vices of his age. "In a manner," he said, "I was sent ahead to luxury by my father . . . an old man dripping with unguent and a reveller; and so I seemed to no one too luxurious, but rather a little out of his senses. Rightly do they not punish every luxury in the young: they stop quickly. I stopped, when I had this example of luxury. You ask what remedy I had? Age: I now thought that what I was doing no longer became me."

6.8. This thought CESTIUS himself expressed in a sound manner; Alfius Flavus, his pupil, who had said the same thing more wantonly, he rebuked. FLAVUS said it thus: that when he had torn himself from sloth, he gradually returned to frugality, and his vice became hateful to him. "This was," he said, "why I stopped: I felt," he said, "that I was growing old." CESTIUS said this was sweeter, indeed, but censured the last epigram. "It is incredible," he said, "that, being a young man, he felt himself growing old, and I should not wish him to seem to have been luxurious so long until he lost his sense of feeling."

6.9. FUSCUS ARELLIUS said: I am not going to accuse my father, but to defend myself, lest I be ill-spoken-of for another's luxury. The device conceived while the son was luxurious is superfluous now that he is reformed. In his narrative he had this colour: that the father's mind had collapsed in a sudden frenzy. A harlot hanging from the old man's neck, a herd of parasites poured round my father, base brawls with rivals, and day added to a nightly drinking-bout. I too thought at first it was a device, not a disease: I stopped being luxurious; he will stop, I said, if he began for my sake. He persists in youthful vices, more shamefully luxurious and longer. What shall I do?

6.10. If I wish to mend my father in his own way, I must be luxurious. SILO POMPEIUS gave the young man an advocate; which Latro thought should not be done in an accuser's person, that someone should accuse a father through an advocate. RUFUS VIBIUS, on the young man's side: a merry old man! In his son's honour he gets drunk. In his narrative he used this colour: that the father was dissolute; that, his mind now slipping, he had begun to praise luxury; to say that those live more happily who let themselves love to the end; that one should have only what one has received; meanwhile to rebuke, as though they were not . . . "A boorish young man!" he said. "Premature severity," he said, "is not frugality but gloom: what will you do as an old man?" Do you not believe that this was said by a man who, even when he wishes to rebuke vices,

6.11. is luxurious? ARGENTARIUS declaimed with this colour: two men are luxurious in one house: one young, one old; one a son, one a father; both walk abroad in equally unrestrained dress. The one says this to you: I use the pleasures granted to my age and fulfil the law of youth; I began in good time; as soon as I have paid this first service of youth, as a debt and a customary thing, I shall return to good morals. I do what my father did, when he was young. Will he deny it? Of what kind his cause is, you shall see; let him do, if not what ought to be done, at least what is wont. The other says: I know I walk abroad a new marvel of the city, a luxurious old man, but this kind of chastising seemed more moving; to mend my son, I myself began to sin. So, if your grandfather were alive, that no one in the house might be luxurious, there would have been three of you luxurious.

6.12. On the father's side GLYCON SPYRIDION said: "I spend unwillingly, but you do not stop." AGROITAS OF MASSILIA said a far livelier epigram than the other Greek declaimers, who in this controversia jested like rivals. Now Agroitas spoke unpolishedly, that you might know he had not been among the Greeks, with strong epigrams, that you might know he had been among the Romans. The epigram that was praised was this: "On luxury we have disagreed: you spend with pleasure, I with pain." DAMAS SCOMBRUS: "Possessing . . . you are luxurious in luxury."

6.13. DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS: "But if comely flesh is changed by luxury." HERMAGORAS used to speak epigrams that were rare but pointed, and such as would deeply affect an attentive listener but slip past a careless and inattentive one. In this controversia he said: "O cruel fortune! We did these things commanding one another." BARBARUS said a common thought commonly enough: "You shall know, child, that the mind is still in its first bloom." More elegantly Hispo ROMANIUS composed this: my frugality pleases you, because I have kept my patrimony, because I have added to it, because I married in good time, always loved my wife, kept myself safe from every scandal. This I affirm — that in my whole life I have done nothing more frugal. A thing said by all, SYRIACUS VALLIUS said most quickly: son, let us stop when you wish.

7.1. THE THEME: A man, going abroad, left his wife behind. While he was away, a handsome, rich, unknown young man moved into the neighbourhood, was repeatedly rebuffed by the wife, fell sick, died, and made the wife his sole heir on the ground that she was chaste and could not be corrupted. The husband, on his return, accuses her of adultery. OF PORCIUS LATRO: Although the morals of the state have now sunk so low that no one can seem too credulous in suspecting adultery, yet I have been so far from that vice that I rather fear someone may charge me with too much patience or too much dullness, in bringing so late a complaint. I do not accuse my wife of adultery save now that she is grown rich; I drag her as defendant from a house in which nothing of mine is left. While I have travelled so long abroad, and have fled no peril by land or sea, she has earned more within a single neighbourhood than I in a whole voyage over the sea. After such great profits of unchastity, if I can keep silent, I must confess that I was away for this reason — to vie with my wife in increasing my patrimony by travel. This, judges, is my torment — that, branded by your verdict, though she lose her doubled dowry, she will yet have more from her gains than the condemned must lose; so much has her rich lover poured out upon her, that even after punishment it pays to have been an adulteress. What I charged my wife as I set out, I know;

7.2. the rest — how a handsome, rich, unknown young man moved into the neighbourhood of a handsome and, in her husband's absence, too free woman; how, by constant satiety of daily lust, day and night, his strength drained, he perished — ask of rumour. I ask you, judges, what was my duty: could I, with my honour safe, suspect nothing about an inheritance into which I am named even as confirming witness by my wife? I have come for nothing else than to complain of my fortune; for the case you know better.

7.3. It is time, judges, that a husband be believed about his wife — that so handsome a woman could be loved: a chaste woman could perhaps be loved thus, that she might not be solicited; and there is no cause for her to say: that was not in my power. You are mistaken, judges, if you do not think that a greater incitement to soliciting a matron is the hope of corrupting her than a face, however lovely and charming. If as much could be hoped in a beautiful woman as can please, all beautiful women would turn all eyes upon themselves. A matron who wishes to be safe against the wantonness of a solicitor should go out adorned only so far as may keep off the unchaste, if by nothing else, by the modesty of her years; let her keep her eyes cast down to the ground; against an officious greeter let her be inhuman rather than immodest; even in the necessary exchange of a return greeting let her be covered with much blushing. So let her pledge herself to modesty; let her deny her unchastity by her face long before she denies it by word. Into these guards of preserved integrity no lust will break.

7.4. Go forth composed, with smooth brow, to every allurement, a little more darkly than naked women with their garments laid aside, with speech exquisitely turned to every witticism, all but offering blandishments unbidden, so that whoever sees you may not fear to approach: then do you wonder if, when you have written out your unchastity by so many tokens — dress, gait, speech, face — someone was found who would not draw back from an adulteress running upon him? She ordered, I suppose, the solicitor's go-between to be seized and stripped, demanded scourges and lashes and every kind of torture, and barely restrained the weakness of a woman's hand from the wounds of a worthless slave.

7.5. How often did she implore her absent husband's name? How often did she complain that she did not travel abroad with him? No one asks a second time one who refuses thus. With whom did you complain? Before whom were you indignant? Do you think you will go far enough toward proving your chastity, if you only deny the outrage — which, for the most part, even the most unchaste woman, in hope of a richer reward, deliberately feigns? When did you write to your husband about the wrong done you, and, that your solitude might not lie open to the chance of a like wrong, beg his earlier return? And how much more becomingly should I have learned of the affront to my marriage-chamber by a wife's letter than by a solicitor's will! Most wretched of all the age's husbands, with my absence thus despised, I should even now not know my own wrong, had the man who did it wished to keep silent.

7.6. So often solicited, did you not veil that face by which you could please? Did you not curse every ornament as the cause of such a wrong? What comes next to one who promises: being asked, she keeps silent about the outrage. Look at the adulterer's fortune; from it let that go unpunished which she gave to the adulterer, if there is anything she did not give. Why do I reckon up everything one by one? What did I, her husband, not send her from my own goods? Now, with all my fortune, I lie hidden among the adulterer's gifts! "Let her be sole heir." Why so? "You have it," he says; he wrote the reasons: "because, when I had appealed once, when I had appealed a second time, when I had appealed a third time, I did not corrupt her."

7.7. O we, born in too happy and golden an age, as they say! So even those who seek the unchaste honour the chaste? "Of all my goods, of all my money, let her be sole heir, because she could not be corrupted, because she could not be stormed by so many solicitations, because she so faithfully guarded her chastity." Conceal the testator's name a little while: do you not think it the will of a husband? Lo, suspecting no disgrace in my wife, amid mutual love — or at least so believed — if I, now about to die, seizing the tablets, wish to set an inscription upon her along with my gifts, it must be sought from the adulterer's will. "Let her be sole heir, though a stranger, though unknown; only because she is chaste, because she is uncorrupted." What?

7.8. Has this so censorious an adulterer no mother? No sister? No kinswoman? Or is none of them chaste? For this, of course, with such great riches he wanders through foreign cities in honour of unknown chastity. There, where he was born, no woman was chaste; and there, where he did business, because every woman was a prostitute, a chaste heiress was sought, by mistake, with a vacant will. I charge with adultery a woman whom I received in marriage, of whom I prayed for children in common, whom I would most gladly believe chaste. Will the age now give us up to every endurance, so that against a husband's complaint a wife is defended by a stranger's testimony? But, by Hercules, against the opinions of outsiders this was a most splendid defence: I please my husband.

7.9. But I, if you now accept this fashion of writing, will, in your sight, write thus: "let my wife be my heir, because, while I was abroad, she was loved to distraction; because she was left heiress by a strange and lustful young man; because she entered upon so infamous an inheritance." From two wills I send you to deliberate: which will you follow? The one by which she is acquitted by an adulterer, or the one by which she is condemned by her husband? The one fruit of chastity is to be believed chaste, and, against all enticements and all allurements, the only firm support, as it were, for women's natures is to have fallen into no scandal. It is perhaps a new and dreadful thing not to . . . into all men's esteem . . . then . . . from one who will give . . . experiences of various . . . a woman . . . one chastity . . . and yet she must take care both to be and to seem chaste.