Book 7

pr.1. Day after day you press me about Albucius. I will put you off no longer, although I did not hear him often: throughout a whole year he would speak before the public only five or six times, and not many forced their way into his private practice-sessions — and even those he favoured he came to regret. He was one man when he committed himself to a crowd, another when he was content with a few. He used to begin seated, and only when warmth had drawn him out did he venture to rise. That untimely philosophy in his declamations strayed without measure and without end; rarely did he fill out the whole controversia. You could not say it was a division, you could not say it was a declamation: as a declamation much was wanting, as a division much was left over. When he spoke before the public he summoned all his powers, and for that reason he did not stop. Often, while he was declaiming, the trumpet sounded three times, because in every controversia he wanted to say not what ought to be said but whatever could be said. He argued tediously rather than subtly: he bound argument to argument, and as if nothing were firm enough, he confirmed every proof with further proofs.

pr.2. There was this further fault in his argumentation: he developed a question not as a part of the controversia but as if it were a whole controversia. Every question had its own proposition, its own development, its own digressions, its own bursts of indignation, even its own epilogue. So while expounding one controversia he was really delivering several. What then? Is not every question to be filled out through all its parts? Of course — but as an accessory, not as the sum. No limb is well-proportioned if it equals the body. As for splendour of language, I doubt whether any other man had so much. His strength was not great, but his diction was. He spoke at a rapid and outpouring pace, yet with preparation. The faculty of extemporizing, as those who knew him more closely affirmed, was not lacking in him, but he thought it lacking in himself. His sententiae — which Pollio Asinius used to call "white" — were simple, open, bringing nothing hidden, nothing unexpected, but resonant and bright.

pr.3. He moved the passions effectively, he handled figures admirably, he prepared his ground in a suspicious way. But nothing is so unfair as obvious preparation: it shows that some trick lies beneath. So restraint must be applied, that the preparation may be preparation, not confession. He filled a commonplace richly. You could not complain of poverty in the Latin tongue when you heard him: such a flow of cultivated speech poured out. He never tortured himself over how to say a thing, but over what to say. The power of unfolding sufficed him as far as he wished; and so he himself used to say, when he wished to show that he did not hesitate over the choice of words: "When the mind has seized upon the matter, the words come crowding round." Hence one could not admire any evenness in him. He was most brilliant — and the same man would speak of the meanest things of all: vinegar and pennyroyal and lanterns and depilatory and sponges. He thought there was nothing that could not be said in a declamation.

pr.4. The reason was this: he feared to seem a schoolman. While he avoided one fault he fell into another, and did not see that the excessive splendour of his style was not defended by these mean ingredients but befouled. But this is common to all men, that they would rather excuse their faults than escape them. For Albucius did not seek how not to be a schoolman, but how not to seem one. He took nothing away from his superfluous noise; he brought in these mean words to cover for the others. To this was added an inconstancy of judgement: whomever he had just heard speaking gracefully, him he wanted to imitate. I remember that, dropping everything, he sat with his notebooks at the feet of the philosopher Fabianus, who was much younger than himself;

pr.5. I remember him stunned with admiration for Hermagoras, withering away in imitation of him. He had no confidence in his own talent, and hence his constant changing. So, while he transfers from one style to another — now wishing to be plain and to stick to bare facts, now rugged and forceful rather than polished, now brief and neat, now lifting himself too high, now sinking himself too low — he made sport of his own genius and as an old man spoke far worse than he had spoken as a young one. For age availed him nothing toward improvement, since his pursuit was always new. The use of homely idiom is, among the virtues of oratory, a thing that rarely succeeds: it needs great moderation and a certain occasion. He used this virtue with mixed results: often it turned out well for him, often he came to grief. And yet it is no wonder if a virtue so near to a fault is grasped with difficulty. No one ever showed this more becomingly than our Gallio.

pr.6. Even as a young lad, when he declaimed, he used this style aptly and fittingly; which I admired the more, because tender youth shrinks from everything not only that is mean, but that resembles the mean. Fortune rarely answered to Albucius, but his reputation always did: however much one regretted having heard him, one was glad to hear him. He was a gloomy, anxious declaimer, one who feared for his own delivery even after he had spoken: so completely was no moment free from care. This anxiety drove him from the forum — that, and the cruel outcome of a single figure. For in a certain trial before the Hundred Men, when it was said that an offer of an oath had at some point been made by the opposing party, he introduced a figure of this kind, by which he might turn all the charges back upon his opponent.

pr.7. "Does it please you," he said, "to settle the matter by oath? Swear — but I will administer the oath: swear by the ashes of your father, which lie unburied; swear by your father's memory"; and he developed the commonplace. When he had finished, L. Arruntius rose from the other side and said: "We accept the condition; he will swear." Albucius cried out: "I did not offer a condition; I spoke a figure of speech." Arruntius pressed on. The Hundred Men were already hurrying to the last business. Albucius cried out: "By this reasoning figures of speech are abolished from the nature of things." Arruntius replied: "Let them be abolished; we shall be able to live without them." The upshot was this: the Hundred Men declared that they would give judgement for Albucius's opponent if he swore; the man swore. Albucius could not bear this insult, but, having sworn, laid upon himself the penalty for false accusation: never again to plead in the forum. For he was a man of the highest probity, who knew neither how to do an injury nor how to suffer one.

pr.8. And he used to say: "What reason have I to plead in the forum, when more people hear me at home than hear anyone in the forum? I speak when I wish, as long as I wish; I am counsel for whichever side I wish." And although he would not admit it, it delighted him in declamations that figures could be spoken without danger. Yet not even among the schoolmen could he escape the insults of Cestius, a most biting man. When in a certain controversia Albucius had said, "Why is it that a cup, if it falls, is broken, but a sponge, if it falls, is not broken?" Cestius said: "Go to him tomorrow; he will declaim for you why thrushes fly and gourds do not fly."

pr.9. When Albucius, in that controversia about the brother who set adrift in an unrigged ship the brother condemned for parricide, had said, "He placed his brother in a wooden sack," Cestius, about to speak the same theme, set out the controversia thus: "A certain man, when his brother had been condemned at home by their father on the stepmother's accusation, and he had received him for execution, placed him in a wooden sack." A great laugh from everyone followed. But the declamation did not go well even for Cestius himself; for he said few good things. And when he was not praised by the schoolmen, he said: "Does no one put these men in a wooden sack, so that they may arrive somewhere on earth where cups are broken but sponges are not broken? I see what you want: to hear sententiae rather than jokes. So be it: hear the sententiae spoken in this very controversia."

1.1. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. Of my brother I dare neither to judge nor to speak: on one count I both thank him and congratulate him, that he could save our father though ordered to die. Confounded by so great a storm, I could neither weigh anything nor make anything out. I will reveal to you, father — fortune torturing me — more charges than you yourself seem to know. Whether you handed my brother over to me bound or unbound I do not know: so far as my stupefaction goes, he could even have fled; nor did I well remember whether father or stepmother had charged me with such a service — whether they had wished it a service or a punishment, a vengeance or a parricide. You bid me sew my brother into the sack? I cannot, father. Do you not forgive me? Or do you not believe me? I maintain that not even you could do it, if some tyrant had said to you: "Come, sew your son in with your own hands." In this work can you use your own eyes, can you use your own hands? Can you bear to hear the groan of your enclosed son? If you can, I fear you have condemned an innocent man; if you cannot, then to show what a brother could not do against a brother, I have given my father as witness.

1.2. Why do you accuse me of having granted my brother impunity, when my purpose was overcome by fate? My brother did not obtain from me that he should live, nor that he should flee: he obtained nothing else than that he should die otherwise than in the sack. My case is a bad one — as is fitting between brothers. Where was hope? In the rudder? There was none. In the oars? Not even in these. In a companion? No one was found to be the companion of a shipwrecked man. In the sail? In the topsail? All the gear was cut away; there was no support for hope. Must I excuse myself to my father or to my brother? Of your son I make this answer: as long as he is allowed to remain on his native soil, he is a citizen; cast into the sea, whatever after exile and shipwreck he does or suffers, torn away from every bond of common life, is part of his punishment, not also a work of wickedness. But to others who complain I will give you yourself as witness that he is no pirate.

1.3. I robbed him of the sight of the land, of the light, even of the means of a human death; fortune herself, who took pity on him, yet left him nothing but the sea. "I must die," he said; "my father has ordered it: neither do I beg you that I may not die, nor is it lawful for you not to do what you were ordered. Between an angry father and a brother about to die, take up the choice that your duty makes necessary: render my blood to my father, but spare me the sack; I am willing to die, but by your pure hand; this gift of your devotion I will carry down to the shades — that it was granted me, through my brother, to die otherwise than as a parricide."

1.4. OF ASINIUS POLLIO. Lend me fair ears: I will give you even one condemned to be acquitted. "He lives," he says, "my brother." I do not believe it. "He saved me," he says. You have made me believe it. This is the sum of what was done: in that house in which a parricide was readily believed, I could not kill my brother, nor my brother our father. "What have I to do with that ship? I wish to die only once." OF Q. HATERIUS. Lightning flashed out on every side from the thick clouds, and with terrible crashing the rough storms had hidden the day: rains everywhere, and everything raging with squalls. The sea, I say, awaits the parricide. The sea had swelled with sudden tempests, fearful even for lawful vessels. "I confess, I confess," I said: "my brother, Fortune, if he is innocent, I commend to you." I found, abandoned even by the shipwrecked, a vessel — a wretched fragment and already an omen for those about to sail, which, if any helmsman had seen it,

1.5. he would have put off his voyage. The shipwrecked man is sent off from the shore. OF MARCELLUS AESERNINUS. "You have, brother," I said, "if you are innocent, a ship; if guilty, the sack." I did not commit parricide — and, how easily we men err, I thought it done; I was deliberating whether to obey my father. "Brother," he said, "you will be the first in the house to commit parricide." OF ARGENTARIUS. What you had ordered was done: my brother perished. "He lives," he says, "and let me go." By a fine argument he is proved to live. He raised both hands to heaven: "If I never plotted impiously, if even condemned I love my father, immortal gods, judges of all things, be present." Had he felt otherwise, he would have called down upon himself the cruel seas: thus he steered his ship. OF BLANDUS.

1.6. The vessel lay on the shore, which even whole had borne men unhappily. I will believe him a parricide if, as you set out, he gave you his own ship. Suddenly, while I was not aware, the iron fell from me together with my courage; my hands grow numb, and by some confusion darkness is poured over my dazed eyes. I understood how hard it is to commit parricide, even what one's father commands. So may you succour me, Fortune — you who alone look upon the wretched in our house — so may it befall me to live or die honourably, so may I be the last accused in our house, as truly he swore that he had had a better stepmother than a brother. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS.

1.7. I confess, I wished to kill him; but then I understood how hard parricide is. "I," he says, "wished to kill my father? Not even now could I." Our father sailed on a clear day, a calm sea, with auspicious voyage, in an undamaged ship. What is this? The condemned man sailed more luckily than the man who had condemned him. "Go," he said; "I was not permitted to have you as a father; I will have you as a patron; come back." A great proof of devotion: a father dear to his son even after punishment. Which do you think — that he learned innocence among pirates, or that he did not lose it even among pirates? OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. He could kill his father: what witness did he fear? Disowned by my father, where shall I betake myself? To the seas? I cannot: I have the pirates angry with me. When my brother was handed over to me and I was ordered to exact the penalty, if there is any faith in me, I thought I was being tested, whether I could commit parricide. OF PORCIUS LATRO.

1.8. You would have perished, father, had you not fallen in with a parricide. OF TRIARIUS. He was sailing in a shipwreck. It is too little that he did not kill our father; nay, he even let him go in an undamaged ship — and is called a pirate too: a second time, on a false charge, he is ill spoken of. OF CESTIUS PIUS. There was a ship — or rather there had been, but a rotten one, its joints loosened, an unlucky omen for the voyage. "Sew me into the sack: at least I shall feel the seas, and not also see them." The torn sails too had made hollows of wind, and the shipwrecked raft had outstripped armed fleets: you would know that he sailed who was destined to save his father. Cruel and obstinate, the stepmother, after all is overcome, none the less rages. The seas are now at rest, the brigands now pity, the pirates now spare. We were passing by our mother's tomb, he fearing death, I crime: wait, judges; soon fortune will hurl a crime upon us.

1.9. The vessel lay, very old and worn by the salt sea, scarcely able to hold one life. I came to you about to seek a fair victory — to prove myself a parricide. "You did not kill," he says, "your brother." Stepmother, hear a most welcome word: I confess I am a parricide, I killed my brother; am I safe, father, if I prove this? I placed him in an unrigged ship: is this not to kill? For a stepmother, indeed, a stepson is never killed enough. Nature has opened many roads to death, and the fates run down by many paths; and this is the most wretched condition of the human race, that we are born in one way and die in many: the noose, the sword, the steep place, poison, shipwreck, a thousand other deaths lie in wait for this most wretched life. And this is called killing — only it takes longer. If anyone now stands in the crowd, he says this: "Shall anyone spare this man, who killed his brother and proves that he killed him?"

1.10. You arrange a pair in your house, so that one is a parricide by crime, the other by service. My brother was placed in a ship: what sort of ship? You know that nothing is more dangerous than even well-equipped vessels: a little timber keeps fate apart. But what if that life is committed to no oars, defended by no sail, no rudder? The ship is unrigged, open on either side; the poor wretch is put aboard a wreck, and adds his weight besides to a vessel destined of itself to go to the bottom. Behold a ship armed by divine power: suddenly sails appeared, suddenly the ship began both to steer itself and to lift itself up. Great is the protection of innocence in dangers. The savage sea rolls, the squalls press the ship's sides with foaming onset, the ship is battered on every side by perils: yet innocence is safe.

1.11. O seas more just than judgements! O storms gentler than the father! The life that he cast out, you saved. Nor was this only done by divine power, that he reached harbour safely: he is taken up by a fleet of brigands. Let the father have a mind to sail: he will be captured — that he, the judge, may come to regret his own sentence. "The stepmother could condemn me for parricide; she could not make me a parricide even by condemning me. Recognize my innocence on the sea, which at home you would not." With embraces, with kisses he saw me off: did a parricide thus dismiss his father?

1.12. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. Many things I do not recognize: my brother was condemned at home, I in public; against him it was charged that he had committed parricide, against me that I did not commit it; he denied his charge, but I must use a strange defence: "I killed my brother"; in that house in which parricides are condemned, this is innocence. I see, judges, that you are unwilling to hear this kind of defence: so I would rather prove myself innocent to you than to my father. I did not kill my brother, I could not kill my brother; we feared the same things, grieved over the same things, wept the same tears, had the same father, the same mother, the same stepmother;

1.13. I am of a gentler heart by nature, of a softer soul. Nature has not given the same disposition to all mortals: one is harder, another more merciful; even among pirates one is found who cannot kill. I thought I had been chosen so that no other should kill him. If our mother were alive, I think he would have handed him to her; what was next to that, he handed him to me. Which seems to you the case — that he wished to punish his son by his brother's hands, or to send away his stepson? I am ashamed of my own defence; I fear that, when I begin to relate what I did, you will say: "Surely you were denying that you could kill a man."

1.14. OF MUSA. My brother was handed over to me, of all people, to be punished. With what intention you did this, father, is matter of dispute among most men: as for me, if you wished anything gentler to be done at that time, I did not understand it; I placed him aboard, much resisting, and sewed him into the sack, while he begged for it. You charge me with too soft a soul: one man is gentler, more than he ought to be, another more severe than is necessary; another, placed in the middle of the passions between the two, is wholly in his own control. Some men can both accuse and condemn and kill; some are so gentle that they cannot even give testimony against a man's life. I cannot kill a man: this fault is found even among pirates. Some men cannot live without administering the state; for others, the chief tranquillity is to lie hidden in private life and to have withdrawn beyond all envy; some cannot be persuaded to bind themselves in marriage, others to do without it; there are men who fear the camp, there are men who rejoice in their own scars.

1.15. Amid so great a variety of characters, see how small is the thing I am excusing: I ask pardon not for ambition, not for sloth; I am merciful, I cannot kill a man. Congratulate yourself, father, on my nature: never will such a son commit parricide. This fault I seem to have drawn from you. Or do you not think him merciful who gave to a brother, to be punished, the one he had condemned? Lucullus's centurion could not kill Mithridates — his right hand and his resolve failed together — Mithridates, by good Jupiter, so undoubted a parricide! OF POMPEIUS SILO. Rejoice, father: neither of your sons committed parricide. I sent the shipwrecked man away from the harbour. Tell, father, how the man so dismissed dismissed you. Do you wish, father, to know whether the accuser or the accused is the more guilty? Cast the stepmother into another ship; let her make her vows, let her pray: if she never accused an innocent man, if she never crushed an undeserving stepson, she will fall in with such pirates as do not know how to dismiss their captives.

1.16. The other side. OF MUSA. My parricide reigns on the sea. OF SEPULLIUS BASSUS. Deny that he was a parricide at home, you who know that he is a pirate. OF GAVIUS SABINUS. An outrage! A condemned parricide, after his punishment, could say to his own father: "Die." The division. Latro divided into these questions: whether it was lawful for him to do what his father ordered. "It is not lawful," he says, "to kill a brother; nor had he been condemned: for he had not fallen by a public trial." Forgive me if I am too scrupulous, when I see a man so easily condemned: I fear lest someone arraign me for parricide. It is easy. If the case is to be pleaded at home, even the guilty can hope for acquittal; in the forum what shall I answer? "I killed my brother"? Certain men call me a parricide because I was not present to my accused brother. Whether, if it was lawful, he ought to have done it.

1.17. "That man is guilty, but he is my brother. The laws of nature are sacred even among pirates." What will you judge of me, if I do it? I think you will hereafter find it hard to believe parricide of me. And, even if he ought to have obeyed his father, whether he is to be pardoned if he could not. "I will confess," he says, "what perhaps will offend the ears of brothers, will offend my father: I wished to kill my brother, I could not. Darkness suddenly came over me, my courage stiffened, my body sank as my breath was cut off. I cannot kill my brother." Set a pirate in this place: he too will be unable. Some men only cannot kill a man; some men's hands fail against the enemy. The brother's kindness too is not so great, father, as you think: he did not refuse to kill you, but was unable. He made those last divisions: although he did not kill, yet whether — if he punished the condemned man — he ought not to be disowned. For the father says: "If you could not, you should have refused and sent word to me that you could not."

1.18. At this point Latro said a thing much praised: "You should have said," he said, "that you could not." So you did not know? You thought I could kill? What then? You spoke as though you had condemned one parricide. Then, whether he punished his brother. Here there was a description of the punishment, which he said was worse even than the sack, and he added that even today the man is paying the penalty, shut up among barbarians, through whom he must of necessity lack his country, his people, his hearth — yet not even through them is it necessary to commit parricide. This division was used by those who chose not to defend the condemned man's cause and only to plead their own; others were used by those who chose to defend his cause too, among whom was GEMINUS VARIUS, who said that the young man had the best case if he did not kill his brother even though guilty, but a better one if he did not kill him innocent; and the material allows this.

1.19. So Geminus made these questions, and those who agreed with him: whether he ought not to be disowned even if he did not kill his guilty brother. Here he said: it was not lawful, I ought not, I could not. And whether if he did not kill him innocent. A pretty thing Geminus said here, when he had begun to defend the brother through all the points as though he were a defendant: "Someone will say: 'Do you defend him so late?' I could not sooner: today the matter has first been brought into the forum." Lastly: whether he punished even a guilty man sufficiently.

1.20. Concerning the colour, there was debate among the greatest both orators and declaimers, whether anything ought to be said against the stepmother or nothing. PASSIENUS and ALBUCIUS and, besides the orators, a great band of new rhetors went over to this side; there were also those who inveighed against the stepmother; there were also those who did not indeed speak openly, but by hints and figures — a thing Passienus did not approve, saying that it was less decent, or tolerable, to defame a stepmother than to accuse her. Some had only the openings within their control, then were carried away by the impetus. But it is more excusable to fall into a bad colour than to cross over into it. Latro introduced that straightforward colour in the narration, which he used throughout the whole pleading: "I could not kill." And when he had described, with mighty spirit, the man wavering and collapsing in the midst of his thought about killing his brother, he said: "Stepmother, seek another charge against your stepson; this man cannot commit parricide."

1.21. CESTIUS used another colour. "We were passing," he said, "by our mother's tomb." He began to call upon her shade. "I was moved." And with a boyish touch he ran through the colour: "What was I to do?" he said: "my father bade me kill, my mother forbade." And he said, with the colour: "This I thought to myself: I have not been ordered to kill him with my hand, nor with the noose, nor by the sea; the choice of the manner of death is free." ARELLIUS FUSCUS used this colour: "I thought I was being tested by my father; with one and the same punishment," I said, "he wishes to punish one son and to try the other." ALBUCIUS set out more in his arguments and handled almost all the colours. In the narration he used this colour and said: "Grant me this one favour: let me not die as a parricide."

1.22. ARGENTARIUS, as though the brother were not the deviser of this plan, said: "I considered what I should do; at last I found how to avenge the parricide without parricide." PASSIENUS used this colour: "I did not think my father wished his son killed at all costs. It seemed to me that he had prepared everything for mercy: that he had heard the case at home, that it was among his own people. He handed him to me, his brother," I said: "come, if he had wished to spare him, to whom would he have handed him?" ASINIUS POLLIO spoke against the stepmother; and so he used this colour: "I considered with myself what was lawful, what was fitting. If so great a crime," I said, "has been committed, it is no part of mine to expiate the age; there is need of the triumvirs, of the comitium, of the executioner. The punishment of so great a crime can no more be private than its trial." MARCELLUS said: "So, if he committed parricide, shall I commit it too?" — and that sententia which I reported above: "You have, brother" — and so on.

1.23. VARIUS GEMINUS too said: "I did not wish to kill." "Splendidly," I said, "the stepmother divided her hatred between the stepsons; she attacked each differently: against one she brings the charge of parricide, to the other she entrusts it." And he defended him in the narration by this figure: "I asked my brother: 'Before what praetor did you plead your case?' 'Before none,' he said. 'Who was the accuser?' 'No one.' 'Who the witness?' Nay, what witnesses? For even of a lesser crime one man's word is not believed. 'No one,' he said. 'Who pronounced sentence upon you?' 'No one. And besides,' he said, 'if I had been a defendant, would I not have sent to you?'" SEPULLIUS BASSUS used this colour: "I had not a parricide's instruments — no sack, no serpents; yet I cast a parricide into the seas."

1.24. HISPANUS used a harsh colour: "This punishment," he said, "I chose as the heavier. What? Shall that man be sewn up and at once escape all sense of the punishment? No: let him hang in suspense, anxious, and — what not even sewn-up parricides endure — let him himself watch his own penalty; let him hope nothing, fear everything. He ought to die worse than other parricides: he was condemned by his father." And he used this colour throughout the whole declamation, saying that he had chosen this as the heavier. This colour displeased the prudent. For what hope of acquittal has he, if he neither obeyed nor spared? HATERIUS used this colour: "Long I disputed with myself. Is he a parricide whom no witness drags forth, whom no judge convicts? What then? Is he innocent whom his father condemns? And I find a penalty most like the man on trial — a raft sunk yet not wholly destroyed, which could either punish or absolve my brother."

1.25. TRIARIUS too pleaded as though he had wished sentence to be passed on his brother, and said: "At last, lifting my hands to heaven, 'Whatever it is,' I said, 'that rules the lands, that reigns over the deep, whatever it is that from on high looks upon human affairs, I invoke you: the condemned man is committed to the deep; gods, judge after the father!'" This sententia was said to be translated from the Greek, but the Greek is more corrupt: "Poseidon, lord of the unmeasured depths, you who were allotted the kingdom of the sea, a father-slayer is being launched out: judge after the father." From the father's side — namely, that he was dismissed by the pirate-chief — CESTIUS thus: "He thought," he said, "this punishment harder for me than death." And he put it thus in the narration: "I begged that he would kill me; I did not obtain it."

1.26. VARIUS GEMINUS said: "In this he dismissed me — not because he wished me safe, but for his own defence, so that, since he had not killed me now, he might seem not to have wished it before." Latro said: "Who, moreover, is more wretched than I alone, who owe my life to a parricide?" DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS placed an elegant thought in the proem on the young man's behalf, saying that he could find no grounds for being disowned: that he had had no occasion for extravagance, that no parricide was charged against him, that he laboured even under the opposite reproach. "Perhaps," he said, "he complains that I did not ransom him when captured." He added: "There was no need of ransom: he was my child." And when he treated, in the last part, that a father ought to bear even the faults of his children — above all of an only child — he added: "You have learned, father, that even a wicked son is sometimes useful." ARTEMO was praised in the description of the storm and approached it elegantly: "Hear the launching of the man who sailed well." And when he spoke of the vessel itself, he began beautifully: "A hull deserted by a fortune that knows no return." And he set out the last sententia of the description: "A shipwrecked man was launching out from the harbours." And he passed elegantly to a part of the narration: "Tell now, father, how the man so released released you." GLYCON said: "The judgement of a single judge does not suffice . . . set aboard a ship he finds his innocence in fortune."

1.27. I am accustomed to tell you that CESTIUS, a Greek, laboured under poverty of Latin words but abounded in ideas; and so, whenever he ventured to describe something in a richer style, he came to a stop — especially when he had directed himself to the imitation of some great talent, as he did in this controversia. For in the narration, when he was describing his brother handed over to him, he pleased himself in this one — unhappy — elaboration: "It was the dead of night, and all things, judges, that sing beneath the stars were mute." JULIUS MONTANUS, who was a companion . . . an outstanding poet, used to say that he had wished to imitate Virgil's description: It was night, and over all the lands the weary creatures, the race of birds and of cattle, deep sleep held fast. But that Virgil's imitation had turned out well, since he had expressed for the better those excellent verses of Varro: The dogs had ceased to bark, and the cities were silent; all things were of the night, composed in peaceful quiet. Ovid used to say of these verses that they could have been made far better, if the last part of the second line were cut off and it ended thus: All things were of the night. Varro expressed the sense he intended most excellently; Ovid in Varro's line found his own sense: for the line broken off is to mean one thing, the whole line means another.

2.1. If Cicero had accused Popillius, he would be alive. Popillius killed Cicero: I think you now believe that this man killed his father. That he may perish at a single blow, I will give so much: may I be allowed to make this bargain on Cicero's behalf? OF GAVIUS SABINUS. The one thing we could do, we have done: that there should come a time when Popillius would miss Cicero. "Popillius," he said, "you can kill Cicero; you can even kill your father." OF PORCIUS LATRO. About to kill Cicero, he ought to have begun with his father. "Antony," he says, "ordered me." Are you not ashamed, Popillius? Your commander believed that you could commit parricide. He severed the head, cut off the hand, contrived that the smallest part of his crime should be that he killed Cicero. An outrage! Let the action go most successfully; we shall achieve only this — that the man who killed Cicero merely blushes.

2.2. Good gods! I call the killing of Cicero bad morals. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. He smites the neck of so great a man and cuts off the head, severed at the shoulder. Go now and deny that you are a parricide. This one thing, however, you did happily — that you killed your father before Cicero. He moved the judges more easily on a parricide's behalf than, as a client, on his own. To you, advocates, this example belongs: Popillius hates none more than those to whom he owes most. Wherever you are, judges, who sat in judgement on this defendant, do you repent at all of having acquitted him? OF ARGENTARIUS. He is impious, he is ungrateful; I dare to say, he is a parricide: the man who had defended him felt it. Look upon the forum: here you sat beneath Cicero; look upon the rostra: here you stood above Cicero. How much your eloquence availed, Cicero! Popillius is on trial for his morals. He cut off the neck of the speaking man: this is the greeting an acquitted client gives after a long time. Spare him now, I beg, Popillius: Antony charged you with nothing but the killing of Cicero. He committed two parricides, one of which you have heard, the other you have seen.

2.3. OF CESTIUS PIUS. If I say, "His youth was base, his boyhood infamous," he will answer: "Cicero already defended all that." Are you not ashamed, Popillius? Your accuser is alive. "What is so common as breath to the living, earth to the dead, the sea to the storm-tossed, the shore to the cast-up?" Parricide, thus would you too have perished. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. Antony would not have believed that Popillius did it, had it not come into his mind that the man had also committed parricide. An outrage! Cicero is defended by me, when Cicero defended Popillius. OF MENTO. No more could any other than Popillius have killed Cicero, than no one but Cicero could have defended Popillius. The parricide whom Cicero, living, had denied, Cicero, slain, revealed. The fortune of Cicero! Antony proscribed the man who was prosecuted; Popillius killed the man who was defended. If you had been condemned, the executioner would then have sewn you into the sack. I see what he will answer: Antony would not believe Cicero had been killed by Popillius, unless he brought him a token.

2.4. OF TRIARIUS. Grant to Cicero what the kinsmen of Catiline, what the friends of Verres, what the clients of Clodius granted: pass by the proscribed man. Not even from a dead man does he keep his hands; he mangles the slain. Popillius, this is your third parricide. OF POMPEIUS SILO. Can I unburden you any further? Grant Cicero what Antony did. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. Say: "Antony, I can do that crime: I have even killed my father." Cicero's friends were untroubled after Popillius was sent to him. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. Could you kill Cicero? Yet how well Cicero had persuaded us that you could not commit parricide! You killed Cicero as he spoke. "Is there any informer of yours," he says, "to be feared?" Or is no one to be feared by Cicero who comes with Popillius?

2.5. OF Q. HATERIUS. The man who but lately was borne back on the shoulders of Italy — is he now brought back thus by Popillius? When Cicero's head was set up on the rostra, although all were held by fear, yet the people's groan was free. OF JULIUS BASSUS. "Proscribed," he says, "was Cicero." Your father, certainly, was not proscribed. OF BLANDUS. The shades of old Popillius and the unavenged spirits of your father, Cicero, pursue you, so that you may feel the man whom you denied to be a parricide. OF CAPITO. I have brought before you a defendant the most guilty of all that the earth bears — ungrateful, impious, an assassin, twice a parricide; nor yet do I fear; let the advocates see to it: no one is killed by Popillius except after a kindness. I do not even despair of his condemnation; for he is not defended by Cicero. I fear lest I fail to do justice to my cause. It is a greater cause to lament that Cicero was killed by Popillius than it once was to prove that he had not killed his father.

2.6. Could anyone have killed Cicero who had heard him? The marsh of Minturnae did not swallow up the exile Marius; the Cimbrian, even in the captive, saw the commander; the praetor turned his journey aside from the sight of the exile; the man who had seen Marius on the river-bank set him in the magistrate's chair. We cannot complain of Popillius: he held his patron in the same place as his father. Gnaeus Pompey, tamer of lands and seas, gladly professed himself the client of Hortensius; and Hortensius had defended Pompey's goods, not Pompey. Romulus, founder of these walls and a parent consecrated to heaven, did not make so great a city as Cicero saved.

2.7. Metellus put out a fire for Vesta, Cicero for Rome. Let Scipio boast of Hannibal conquered, Fabricius of Pyrrhus, the other Scipio of Antiochus, Paulus of Perses, Crassus of Spartacus, Pompey of Sertorius and Mithridates: no enemy came nearer than Catiline. They say that the head, seized by the hair, with the blood flowing down, befouled this very place in which Cicero had pleaded for Popillius. OF BUTEO. Of how great eloquence he was! He proved that his father had not been killed by the man by whom even Cicero could be killed. OF MARULLUS. If I were an enemy to advocates, I should wish the defendant to be acquitted. I judge it base that in that city Cicero should not be defended, in which even Popillius could be defended.

2.8. Few of the historians have handed down Popillius as the killer of Cicero, and these too say that he was defended by Cicero not as a defendant on a charge of parricide, but in a private trial: the declaimers chose that he should have been a defendant on a charge of parricide. But they accuse him as though he could not be defended, when he can so well be acquitted that he could not even have been accused. It did not please Latro that he should be accused as some accused him: "I charge you with this, that you killed a man, that you killed a citizen, that you killed a senator, that you killed a man of consular rank, that you killed Cicero, that you killed your patron." For by this method the indignation is not aggravated but worn out. One must at once come to the point at which the hearer is hastening; for in all the rest Popillius has so good a case that, with the killing of his patron set aside, he will have no difficulty; his defence is the necessity of civil war. So I do not wish to lead the defendant through those stages which he can so often escape. For in war it was lawful to kill a citizen and a senator and a man of consular rank; it is not even a charge that he killed Cicero, but that he killed his patron. And it is natural that what ought not to have been done to any patron should be more disgraceful when done to Cicero as patron.

2.9. Latro accused him of his morals: first, that he had so lived as to plead a case of parricide; then, that he had killed his own patron. And he made these questions: whether he can be accused under that name under which he was acquitted. "If anyone," he says, "wishes today to arraign me for parricide, he will not be able. How can the crime that cannot be charged be punished?" Whether acts done in civil war can be charged. Honourably did VARIUS GEMINUS say, when he treated this commonplace: "If you call those times to account," he said, "you speak not of the man's morals but of the state's." If what was done in civil war can be charged, whether this ought to be charged. This question he divided into this: whether, even if it was necessary for him to do it, he ought nevertheless not to be pardoned. For to certain things no necessity ought to compel us. Here Latro said, amid the loudest applause: "So you, Popillius, if Antony had ordered it, would even kill your father?" Then, whether it was necessary for him. "You could have excused yourself, you could have sent someone ahead to Cicero, so that he might know and flee;

2.10. it was certainly not necessary to cut off the hand and head of a dead man." Latro's colour for Popillius was a simple one: that he had acted compelled by necessity; and here he said that sententia: "Do you wonder that it was necessary for Popillius to kill at the time when it was necessary for Cicero to die?" ALBUCIUS said that, for Cicero's punishment, the man most friendly to Cicero had been chosen, as though Antony meant by this to reproach him with his fortune. "He will bear it," he said, "more grievously to be killed by Popillius than to be killed." MARCELLUS AESERNINUS introduced the same colour differently. "Antony was considering with himself," he said: "'What punishment shall I devise for Cicero? Shall I order him killed? Long ago he fortified his mind against this fear; he knows that death is neither untimely for a man of consular rank nor wretched for a wise man. Let something new be done that he does not expect, that he does not fear; he does not scorn to offer his neck to an enemy, but he will scorn to offer it to a client.' Let someone summon Popillius, that he may know how much the defendants he defended profited him." POMPEIUS SILO used this colour:

2.11. "I was offended," he said, "by the proscription, and spoke certain things too freely. 'I do not wonder; you are Cicero's client: so much the more, kill your Cicero.'" And he said a sententia not lacking in force: "Each of us," he said, "but in a different way, was punished: for Cicero the proscription was to be killed; for me, to kill." MARULLUS, our teacher, told the tale thus: "He ordered," he said, "the commander ordered, the conqueror ordered, the man who was proscribing ordered: could I refuse anything to him to whom the state could refuse nothing?" BLANDUS used this colour: "I wished," he said, "to excuse myself; I said, 'Cicero defended me'; he answered, 'I know; he accused me. Go therefore, that he may know that Antony's accusation harmed him more than Popillius's defence profited him.'" BUTEO used this colour:

2.12. "'Let that Ciceronian client, that friend, be summoned,' he said; 'I have devised how Cicero may perish by his own hand.'" CESTIUS used this colour: "Most harsh," he said, "was my service in Antony's camp, for this very reason, that I was Cicero's client; the hardest expeditions were assigned to me. Then too I was summoned as though to punishment: 'Go,' he said, 'kill Cicero; and I will not believe it,' he said, 'unless you bring the head'; and he marvelled the more at his own power, that it was not permitted to Popillius not to kill Cicero." ARELLIUS FUSCUS used this colour: that he had followed Antony's party so that, if he could do anything, he might help Cicero; that when the proscription was made he had fallen at Antony's knees and begged for Cicero; that Antony, offended, had said, "So much the more, kill the man you do not wish to die." This colour displeased PASSIENUS, because it leads to a witness; for if Popillius did this, he not only has something to defend, but something to boast of.

2.13. HISPO ROMANIUS used a vehement and harsh colour: for he gave Popillius an advocate, and said that he would plead Popillius's case in one way, Antony's in another; for Popillius he would say: "I did not wish to kill; I was compelled"; for Antony he would say: "Cicero ought to have been killed." And he stated the commonplace, that the state could not otherwise be pacified than if that disturber of peace were removed from it. Alone of the declaimers he inveighed against Cicero. "Did not he," he said, "when he judged Antony a public enemy and all Antony's soldiers, understand that he had proscribed himself and Popillius too?" This colour at first sight is rather harsh, but by him it was handled admirably. VARIUS GEMINUS said: "When Antony had ordered me, I allowed it, lest some client of P. Clodius be sent — one who would afflict him with insults before he killed him, who would tear him living."

2.14. ARGENTARIUS said: "Summoned, I came; after the proscription Antony had become more terrible even to his own. I was ordered to kill Cicero. What was I to do? I could disobey in one way only — by killing myself: not even Cicero could do this." On the accuser's side, in that place where Popillius arrives, everyone wished to say something new. Latro said: "He had shut the doors; no one was admitted to the proscribed man; Popillius, as soon as he came, was let in." CESTIUS said: "When it was announced to Cicero, he said: 'For Popillius I am always at leisure.'" CORNELIUS HISPANUS even made Cicero complain: "Popillius, so late?" ALBUCIUS said: "What is it, Popillius? Do I lie safely hidden at all? Must I change my place?" Foolishly † SABIDIENUS PAULUS, who brought Cicero in at the very moment reading aloud his speech for Popillius. And MURREDIUS did not allow this controversia to pass without some mark of his stupidity. For he described Popillius carrying Cicero's head and hand, and gave a Publilian sententia: "Popillius, how differently you held Cicero's hand as a defendant!"

3.1. OF CESTIUS PIUS. Say what I have done. You do not know? Surely even secret things do not escape you. Let him dismiss me: you will understand for whom I prepared it. Say what I did before: unless perhaps you are content to charge the defendant with parricide, the parricide with nothing. OF ARGENTARIUS. I wished to die because I was a defendant. What then? Shall no defendant live? He shall live, beside whom his father will sit in mourning. I shall return to poison, since unfair fortune did not allow me to be rid of danger by a single peril. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. Why then do you not die? It does not please me to die if it pleases anyone else. When he interrupted me, I fell into these thoughts: "Was anyone ever so wretched? Does anyone hate me more than I do myself?" I began to pity myself.

3.2. OF VARIUS GEMINUS. "Three times," he says, "you have been disowned." You seem to me, father, to reproach me that I live so long. That I come, that I speak for myself, do not wonder: it is as pleasant for the innocent to be defended as for the wretched to die. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. I know that certain men in peril boast of this: "Now for the first time I plead a case." This I cannot say; three times I have been a defendant, nor do I doubt that I have come to be hated by you, since I hate myself. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Three times I have pleaded; to these punishments of mine poison was added; I hold it; if this is not enough for you, I will live.

3.3. The other side. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. I call the immortal gods to witness that, by three disownings already, I took care lest I find poison in my house. The defendant on a charge of parricide lives, who, disowned, wished to die. In how narrow a compass is the fortune of my house set! Either the father must perish or the son. What have you, that you should wish to die? The childless live, the shipwrecked live, even those live to whom thrice-disowned children have fallen. When he says he wishes to die, he asks for life. I hold a parricide — what is plain — most ready even for his own death. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. Do not wonder if I do not show the strength due to my grief: by three trials you have learned that fathers cannot accuse.

3.4. OF VIBIUS RUFUS. When what you confess is so great, how great is what you deny? You sought poison, you bought poison, you brought poison into that house in which you had a father for an enemy. You would rightly have hated your life, if even then I had charged you with parricide. Do you wish to know what your fault is? Reveal who sold it to you; it will be said to him: "Did you sell poison to anyone? Did you sell it to a thrice-disowned man? No doubt you did not know for whom he meant to use it." So do I by this trial delay my son's death? If you shut me up with him, I will die, that I may bring upon you the odium which he wished to bring upon me. OF VARIUS GEMINUS. You ask for whom my son prepared poison? He did not drink it. OF POMPEIUS SILO. "For myself," he says, "I prepared it." And this is to prepare it for one's father. Acquitted, he wishes to die; a defendant, he lives. OF MUSA. "Mithridates had an evil drug." Who else ought to have it than a parricide? "Demosthenes," he says, "had poison and drank it." Am I to you, father, what Philip was to Demosthenes? OF PORCIUS LATRO.

3.5. When I was disowning him, if I had charged anything, he would say: "Did you catch me at it?" Yet you will not have grounds for much doubt about him: what he denies is parricide, what he confesses is poison. "I wish to die," he says. With his father living, even this is parricide. Wretch that I am, I feared equally lest he drink the poison and lest he give it. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. "For myself," he says, "I prepared the poison" — that no one may doubt whether he can kill another. OF JUNIUS OTHO the elder. He is a defendant on a charge of parricide who would rather die than see his father. How do you wish me to prove to you more fully that he wished me to die? He does not wish to die. "I wished to die," he says. Why? Because three times you conquered? If you believe me, he wished to commit parricide; if you believe him, he wished parricide to be committed by me. What sort of defendant is he, whose one defence is that he was unworthy of life? I say that his father was so hateful to him that he wished to kill him; he himself confesses that he was so hateful to himself that he wished to kill himself.

3.6. I do not think you require a division, since the controversia is conjectural. Yet it has a conjecture unlike the rest, and a double one; not as is usual either between two defendants, when we convict one (so that this becomes the proof against the other), or between two charges, when we prove one — as when we say a woman was an adulteress, so that on this ground she may be believed also a poisoner: in one and the same man the conjecture is double. For we ask whether he prepared the poison for his own death or for his father's.

3.7. If it is decided to plead for the young man with the colour that Latro used — that he should change nothing of his words, but say: "I wished to die out of weariness of my disownings and of unceasing misfortune, since I laid aside the dress of mourning only to take it up again with greater torment, and acquittal for me alone was not the end of peril but the beginning" — there begins to intrude, beyond the conjecture, that first vulgar and well-worn question in controversiae of this kind, whether it is lawful to have poison for one's own death. ALBUCIUS pleaded for the young man with that colour, that there was no poison. "When I thought," he said, "that I was hated by my father, I wished to test his feeling — how he would bear mention of my death: and so I held it openly, and in such a way that my father might interrupt." FUSCUS ARELLIUS used the same colour but differently; he did not say, "I wished to test my father," but:

3.8. "that I might make myself pitiable to my father." MURREDIUS, true to his usual stupidity, said that he had prepared a drug for sleep, because unceasing anxieties had made wakefulness habitual to him. From the father's side he gave a colour and a Publilian sententia: "His disownings," he said, "he dissolved with poison"; and again: "My death," he said, "he poured out." I remember OSCUS, when he was speaking of this kind of sententia, with which the talents of all the young men were already infected, complaining of PUBLILIUS, as though he had introduced this madness. CASSIUS SEVERUS, a great lover of Publilius, used to say that this fault was not his, but of those who imitated him in the part in which they ought to have passed him by, and did not imitate what in him was better said than by any comic or tragic writer, Roman or Greek; as that line, than which he said no better line could be found: The miser lacks what he has as much as what he has not; and that other on the same theme: Luxury lacks many things, avarice all; and those lines which could suit even this thrice-disowned man: O life, long for the wretched, short for the happy!

3.9. And he went on to quote very many most eloquent lines of Publilius. Then he said that the author of this fault — which arises from the catching at a single word that signifies several things — was POMPONIUS, the writer of Atellan farces, from whom this fashion of imitation first passed to LABERIUS, and then from him to Cicero, who carried it over to a higher excellence. For — to pass over the innumerable things which Cicero said in his speeches or in conversation in this vein, and not to mention what Laberius said (since the mimes of Laberius have whatever they have of tolerable quality of this kind) — there is this: that Cicero, when at his games the deified Julius brought Laberius on stage as a mime, then restored him to the equestrian order and bade him go and sit among the knights; and all so crowded together that they would not receive him as he came up. Cicero was ill spoken of as being neither a sure friend to Pompey nor to Caesar, but a flatterer of both.

3.10. Caesar had then enrolled many in the senate, both to fill up the order exhausted by the civil war and to repay the favour of those who had deserved well of his party. Cicero jested at both things, for he sent to Laberius as he passed: "I would have received you, were I not sitting in a narrow place." Laberius sent back to Cicero: "And yet you are accustomed to sit on two stools." Each most elegantly, but neither kept measure in this kind of thing. From these the imitation of this pursuit spread to many. But to return to the controversia, CASSIUS SEVERUS said that he liked that colour: "I wished to die"; and he said certain sententiae in the course of disputation: "The third time," he said, "when I was being disowned, I said: 'Nothing is worth so much; let this wretched life, which my father so often harries and assails, receive itself but once.' But again I said to myself: 'Save that life: you will do as you please when acquitted.' Why then do you not die now? someone says. First, the wretched do not always like the same thing; sometimes it is pleasant to contend with one's fortune and to wear it out. Then — do you wish the true reason why I do not die meanwhile? Because I think you wish it." JUNIUS OTHO seemed to have said a foolish sententia: "It matters little to me; for he wished to kill either me or my son."

4.1. OF CESTIUS PIUS. There is no reason for you to weigh a woman's feeling by the law with which she threatens; she does everything that her son may not be bound. About to sail, he left his son to his wife; and she was not yet blind. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. I brought your son down to you; so hold him, embrace him. I dare to say, this pair not even pirates would divide. If she wished her son bound, she would let him go where he hastens. So you, young man, will not even repay your mother the ten months' nourishment? If you will not feed your mother, wait at least to carry her out to burial. OF TRIARIUS. She has brought a law with which to threaten chains, a reason for which she fears. OF MARCELLUS AESERNINUS. If you persist, drag me too to the pirates: I shall obtain nourishment from them; they feed my husband too. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. The mother, if she is not fed, will perish; the father, even if he is not ransomed, is still fed. OF JULIUS BASSUS.

4.2. Your father has both eyes and nourishment left. The other side. OF CESTIUS PIUS. I wish to imitate my mother: she taught me to love my own. With one man's chains she binds two. If, by my mother's example, I wish to be dutiful, I owe my father even my eyes. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. You will find your deserter with your father. OF VARIUS GEMINUS. What a fortune it is! To the conquered, mother, you proclaim chains; to the conqueror one must go to the pirates. Though I render my father everything, yet he had the better wife. How many think, because I am unwilling to go to ransom my father, that I am now in collusion with my mother! OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. For my mother I fear nothing, if I leave her with you; for my father, what do I not fear, if I leave him among pirates? OF BUTEO. I will surely tear out my own eyes, lest a wife render more to her husband than a son to his father.

4.3. Latro declaimed this controversia as though it were wholly a matter of duty; he inserted no questions of law, but compared the misfortunes of father and mother with each other, and stated it as a thesis: whether a son ought rather to go to ransom his captive father, or to stay to feed his blind mother; and he so divided it as to say: "What the mother desires is useful to the father too." Last he treated that not even the father wishes it; certainly, if he knew the mother to be in this plight, he would not allow it. In the epilogues APOLLONIUS the Greek was vehement. BUTEO had raised a silly question first: whether the law which had been passed about supporting parents pertained only to the father. To them all privileges had been given, and the very penalty for not supporting was a sign of no womanly power. The matter is too silly to be refuted, and so I pass it over; this one thing only that Asinius Pollio said I will report: that in a case which calls for delicacy one ought never to attempt an indecent question.

4.4. HISPO ROMANIUS raised that question: whether the law about supporting parents did not pertain to mothers while the fathers were alive. "A son under paternal power," he said, "can be a slave to none but his father; from every other slavery he is free. Suppose you seek nourishment from one whom your father sends abroad, whom he bids to sail: the first claim is the father's, the second the mother's." ALBUCIUS made that not a question of law but of equity, yet in such a way that he joined law to it: whether the mother's duty came before the father's or the father's before the mother's. POMPEIUS SILO made that question: whether, whenever there was joint ownership between two, the whole power passed to the one who was present. "Suppose," he said, "you are a common slave: you will serve the master who is present. Suppose an estate is held in common: he will take the fruits who is present." And he subjoined to this a hard question: whether the father now has no right at all over the son. "As one who does not have the rights of a free man," he said, "does not have the rights of a citizen, so one who does not have the rights of a citizen does not have those of a father either; he has no power over you, the mother is in possession of the whole law; now the right over you is not common to her, but her own."

4.5. VARIUS GEMINUS divided thus: whether a son can not always be compelled to support his mother; then whether now he ought not to be compelled. "Not always," he said, "is a son compelled. I pass over those who cannot — the sick, the useless; suppose someone sets out to repel an enemy, on whose single service the public safety rests: will his mother hold him back? Suppose an envoy on a matter of the highest concern to the state, suppose on a treaty: will his mother lay hold on him?" And comparing the two duties part by part: "He," he said, "is abroad, you at home; he a captive, you free; he among pirates, you among citizens; he bound, you loosed. But you are blind: he is the more unhappy in this, that he sees; for what does he see? The marks of his captivity, and the slaughters and wounds and crosses of those who are not ransomed. But it is dangerous. Everything is; both to stay at home and to weep."

4.6. Latro said that for the mother one must plead in a subdued and gentle manner. "For she seeks," he said, "not vengeance but mercy, and she stands face to face with a young man in whom she so demands dutifulness as to hinder it." And so he used to say that even rougher words must be avoided whenever such material arose; the very speech must be softened to suit the disposition of the feeling we wish to move; in the epilogues we must on purpose break our very voice too, and let our face fall, and take care that the orator be not unlike his speech; a gentler composition too suits such themes. CALVUS, who long maintained a most unequal contest with Cicero over the primacy in eloquence, was so violent and impetuous an actor that, in the midst of his pleading, the defendant Vatinius rose and exclaimed: "I ask you, judges, must I be condemned merely because this man is eloquent?"

4.7. The same man afterwards, when he saw Asinius Pollio surrounded and being beaten in the forum by the clients of Cato, his own defendant, ordered himself to be set upon a boundary-stone — for he was tiny in stature, on which account Catullus too in his hendecasyllables calls him "that eloquent little manikin" — and swore that, if Cato did any injury to Asinius Pollio, his accuser, he would lay against him a charge of false accusation; nor was Pollio ever afterwards harmed by Cato and his advocates, either in deed or in word. He used besides to step beyond his own benches, and in his impetus rush sideways right into the opponents' party. And his poems too, though they are jesting, are full of a great spirit. He says of Pompey: He scratches his head with one finger. What would you suppose he wants? A man.

4.8. His composition too in his pleadings is rigid after the example of Demosthenes: nothing in it is placid, nothing soft; everything is roused and surging. Yet here, in the epilogue which he delivered for Messius, then pleading his case for the third time, he not only composes gently, but even says: "Believe me, it is no disgrace to feel pity" — and the rest; almost everything in that epilogue is not only of a softened composition, but of a broken one. In this controversia a certain rhetor named FESTUS, of tiny stature, gave a Publilian sententia, at whom EUCTEMON, a man of most charming wit, said in Greek: "Before I saw you, I did not know that rhetors came at half-price." Now Festus's sententia was: "Your father," he said, "is a captive"; if captives move you, this woman too is a captive. And, as though we had not understood: "Do you not know that people are said to be 'captives in their eyes'?"

4.9. And he said this: "Send away that fruitless letter. You ought to hate it: this is what blinded your mother." And that most false thing, into which many fall: "For this very reason," he said, "she is the more to be wept for, that she cannot weep." And again: "Tears," he said, "the mother lacks, causes she has in plenty" — as though the blind were not wont to weep. I remember a certain CRISPUS, an old rhetor, in that controversia of the brave man who keeps his third son — when one son had lost his eyes in tyrannicide, the other his hands in battle — saying: "Rise now, you living corpses, and plead for your father." But why do I mock my own? The one has not eyes wherewith to plead, the other has not hands.

4.10. On many a man composition has imposed by the pretty sound of a sententia; and so I remember LATRO PORCIUS, to reproach this carelessness of the schoolmen in listening — chiefly because TRIARIUS, by composition of prettily falling words, delighted many schoolmen and deceived them all — in a certain controversia, when his words flowed as with a great force and roused, thus rounded off a passage: "Among tombs are monuments" ("inter sepulcra monumenta sunt"); and when the schoolmen praised it with the loudest applause, he inveighed against them as he ought, and brought it about that thereafter they praised even what was well said the more slowly, while they feared a trap. GLYCON said: "Set me beside you, mother, take hold of your child: poor wretch, you do not even see whom you grasp. 'If you do not feed me,' he says, 'wait, that you may bury me.'" HYBREAS in this controversia said: "Child, even if you flee me, I will overtake you, begging." This seemed to some men corrupt, but ROMANIUS nevertheless . . .

5.1. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. When I heard the outcry, if there is any faith in me, I thought adulterers had been caught by my father. Who would endure you coming into the forum as a voluntary witness, even if you came to speak for your son? Most wretched boy, although I myself am in peril, yet for you I fear more: too closely you tread in your brother's footsteps; and so now you do not agree with your mother. As long as my mother lived, my father was content with me as steward. Parricide is not easily committed. Do you wish to know how much nature avails? Even an infant speaks for his brother. OF TRIARIUS. With his father living, an adulteress; as he died, an accomplice; dead, a witness. One man is content with a single witness: I will give the boy. Another is not content with a single witness: I will give the people. She charges her stepson with parricide, her son with lying. The steward enters where he was wont.

5.2. Say, boy, who killed your father; say boldly; you name the same man whom the people name. Night suits crime: surely the time for adulterers. Though he wished it, yet he would not have me have a stepmother. What was the light to me? When about to commit so great a crime, night must be drawn over it. "What," she says, "did I do wrong before?" It is not alike: remember that the inquiry is about a murderer; a murder can be an apprentice-piece, parricide cannot. You brought a light that you might mark out there the one you ought only to wound lightly. We see the sword driven into the breast: so would I have wounded my stepmother. Brother, I ask whether you saw the steward on the last night; I ask nothing of the earlier ones.

5.3. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. Shall I be silent about the adultery which even the people prosecutes? Shall I be silent about the parricide which even the boy prosecutes? I call you to witness, judges, I left my father safe. O great perversity of our age, turned to its opposite! A man has been found who could kill his father and could not kill his stepmother. Even if a man cannot kill his father, he can kill his stepmother. OF SEPULLIUS BASSUS. While I dig through the wall, someone will hear. Whose sleep do you wish to be the lightest — the boy's, the old man's, or the man of middle age's? The boy's? The brother will hear. The old man's? The father. The middle-aged man's? The stepmother. I would ask in what mean house he was born, if he had had any; but as it is, he escapes our inquiry by his obscurity. I do not wonder if you do not know how hard it is to kill a father, since you hold your own father uncertain.

5.4. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. I ask you, woman, whether you think your son is to be believed? Let me be allowed to rear the boy: he will agree neither with his mother nor with his guardian. Three are in the bedchamber: the father you kill, the boy you scorn, the adulteress you know. The slaves and freedmen offered themselves one by one to the boy, and I stood before them all: the assassin lurked behind the adulteress. What did I do wrong before? Whose wife did I corrupt? But if I had done so, I could kill a man, my father I could not. I have good witnesses; I fear this one, in another's power. Look upon my father's body: how heavy the blow, how deep the sword was driven! So would I have struck the stepmother. OF CESTIUS PIUS. That you are an adulterer I will give not one witness, I will give an uncorrupted one, I will give many, I will give even boys. Did I strike my father as heavily as I ought to have struck the stepmother — but the stepmother not even as I struck my father?

5.5. OF JULIUS BASSUS. For you the light was necessary, that you might not kill the woman for whose sake you were killing; for me it was superfluous, lest by the instrument of parricide I betray the parricide. If the nature of things allowed it, I should have had to forget my father while I killed him. With greater license we do the things we do not see, and, though the atrocity of the deed is no less, the dread is less. If I killed my father, my whole couch must be cleared for me; I have no one to obey, since I am a parricide. I cannot boast of avenging my father; my brother seized that office before me. OF BLANDUS. How hard for a son to wound his father, and how easy for a stepson to kill his stepmother! OF VARIUS GEMINUS. "You killed," she says, "your father."

5.6. I call you to witness, judges, these hands do nothing lightly. Did I not wish to kill you, or had I not the power? And yet you are wounded — wounded lightly. How carefully you have been preserved! Give your testimony, and show that thing, not a wound but an argument. Show the wound: how the assassin feared lest he kill! OF PORCIUS LATRO. Why do I bring a light? I shall commit parricide more bravely if I do not see my father. Can a man kill his father before his stepmother, and not be able to kill his stepmother even after his father? OF TRIARIUS. Who, for a parricide, keeps his hands clean, and begins where it is hard to arrive?

5.7. THE DIVISION. These controversiae, which have both a defence and an accusation, not all declaimed in the same order. There were some who defended before they accused, among whom was Latro. FUSCUS ARELLIUS said: "The defendant ought to end with the epilogue. Now the epilogue is best woven to the defence; and men favour the one who defends more than the one who accuses. Let the last part be the one that can send the judge away well-disposed." Some mingled accusation and defence, so as to enter on a comparison of the two defendants and, having at once repelled a charge, straightway transfer it; among whom was CESTIUS. This is not always expedient. At any rate, for the man who has the weaker side it is not useful to engage at close quarters: things that are not compared more easily lie hidden.

5.8. In this controversia † there are even two or three defendants: for the stepmother is joined with the steward. And so on the son's side he said that one must accuse first, because the son had to defend one charge but to bring two — both adultery and murder. If anything is difficult on either side, it requires not colour but argumentation; and so, that I may not exceed measure, I will pass it by. About the stepmother's wound some said pretty things, some silly — nay, many silly.

5.9. First I will report those that were prettily said. FUSCUS said: "The skin is grazed with a light wound; you would not believe it done by a stepson's hand, you would believe it a lover's." PASSIENUS said: "So lightly did that right hand wound you, which neither a wall nor a father withstands?" VARIUS GEMINUS said: "Give the sword to my witness: he will strike harder." CESTIUS said, when he had described how slight the wound was: "You would have hurt me," he said, "if you could have hurt your mistress." BRUTUS BRUTTEDIUS used a homely word with point: "He killed," he said, "his rival, and merely grazed his mistress." HISPO ROMANIUS said a thing of the same kind: "Show, stepmother, show that thing which your lover pinched." BASSUS SEPULLIUS said: "He killed the husband, he merely scratched the adulteress."

5.10. Of those who had said silly things, first there, before all, was your own MUSA, who, when he had described the stepmother's wound, added: "But, by Hercules, my father was pierced through like a wall." MURREDIUS: "He thinks it a defence of his case that he let blood." LICINIUS NEPOS said: "That is not a wound, but the bite of a sporting adulterer." SENIANUS produced a sententia of that stamp of fools: "He did not wound," he said, "his stepmother, but sprinkled her with her husband's blood" — although she is presented as wounded.

5.11. VINICIUS, a man of most exacting talent, who could neither say silly things nor endure them, used to deride this sententia of Senianus, and to compare with it a similar one said in a speech of Votienus Montanus. SENIANUS had said in this same controversia: "Nothing is more sure than a boy as witness, especially one of five years; for he has reached the age at which he understands, and not yet that at which he invents." "This definition," he said, "is ridiculous: 'Nothing is more sure than a boy as witness, especially of five years'; suppose a boy of four is no witness, nor one of six." And he used to add most charmingly: "You would think something was being transacted: everything in this sententia belongs to a circumspect man — definition, exception; but nothing is more unlovely than diligent stupidity."

5.12. The sententia of MONTANUS VOTIENUS he said was like this, and he derided it: "A dog is a sleepless and wakeful animal, especially a chained one, on the alert." Now he was not fair to Montanus himself. He had accused him before Caesar, at the request of the colony of Narbonne. But Montanus was so wholly a schoolman in spirit that on the very day on which he was accused by Vinicius he said: "Vinicius's pleading delighted me"; and he kept quoting his sententiae. Elegantly SURDINUS said to him: "I ask, do you suppose he was declaiming the other side?" A grave disease has invaded the schoolmen: when they have cited examples, they wish to reduce them to some theme of the controversia.

5.13. As this is sometimes to be done when the matter allows, so it is most foolish to wrestle with the material and to fetch things from afar, in the way that MUSA did in this controversia, who, when he was delivering for the son the commonplace about the indulgence of children toward their parents, came to the son of Croesus and said: "In his father's peril the mute man broke through the natural impediments of his voice, who had been silent more than five years." Because a five-year-old boy is presented, he thought that wherever five years were named a sententia could be made, because it had succeeded with Latro, who, when he had made sport of the slight wound, said: "Look at that scarcely visible scar: I ask you, do you not think a little boy did it — and not even a five-year-old little boy?"

5.14. GALLUS VIBIUS spoke a shameless sententia, when he was describing the murder: "He killed," he said, "the husband, hurt the stepmother, spared the boy: even now he thought him his own." For CESTIUS used to say that the boy must be much spared; and so he said, when he praised his testimony: "Were you born for a steward?" HERMAGORAS placed this thought more becomingly: "Was it according to the brother, or not?" Blandus's sententia was praised, when he had described the steward pointed out by the boy: "A finger that signifies much!"

5.15. EUCTEMON said: "Stepmother, I have found a good witness. O dutiful child! O child unworthy of your mother, but wholly your father's!" MURREDIUS, in mimic vein, spoke a foolish sententia, when he had said that the stepmother was disputing against her own son's testimony: "She does," he said, "what she is wont: for her lover she does not spare her own blood." NICOCRATES the Laconian, a dry and squeezed-out declaimer, said: "She spared her own witness, but scorned mine." HERMAGORAS, when he had said that the boy's condition was pitiable, being given back to a hostile stepmother and a steward, said that the steward was already crying out: "He is not ours."

6.1. We should have consolation if a tyrant had made this marriage, not a father. Pay him honour now: make him part of the dowry, let him guard his mistress. Do you think him sane who preferred to imitate a tyrant rather than a slave? Our father, born of honourable parents — for how otherwise could he have held our mother's hand —

6.2. if he had only been freeborn? OF CESTIUS PIUS. Sister, I wish you perpetual barrenness. When I said, "Let us free the slave," he said, "Let us wait for our sister's wedding." So, sister, in order that you may have honourable children, you must commit adultery? He made himself like a tyrant: his daughter like the raped, his freedman like the crucified. The master allowed his slave more than a tyrant. Whoever makes such marriages is either mad or a tyrant. Who can believe this — that it was to be wished by the daughter that the tyranny should not end, that the father should not return? If I ask the father what was the most grievous crime in the tyranny, if he is sane he will answer:

6.3. that mistresses were given to slaves. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. A husband is chosen whom a sane father would have given as part of the dowry. Your son-in-law deserved the cross by the very wedding. An excellent son-in-law, in whom there is nothing more glorious than that he is not among the crucified! A most grievous injury was done even to the slave himself: he was not permitted to keep his mistress a virgin. OF BLANDUS. He did an injury even to the slave, from whom he took away the glory of his self-restraint. By his own wedding he was set free. O marriage baser than any adultery!

6.4. OF JULIUS BASSUS. The state being freed, do not wonder that you saw me sad: for us the tyrant even now lives. The virginity which she had kept under the tyrant she lost under her father. Say, gallows-bird, for whom did you keep my sister a virgin? Say, if you please, "For myself." "I did not violate her," he says, "when it was permitted me." So is he worthy of marriage because he is unworthy of the cross? From his own cell he will move into his mistress's bedchamber — or will the mistress move from her bedchamber into his cell? OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS.

6.5. The violated are of better condition than the virgin: yet to them it fell to change their marriages. Why, tyrannicide, did you receive a reward? Even now some woman is married under the tyrant's edict. The man who had fled the tyrant's edict returns with an edict. It was by the father's madness that this was done — that he could not accuse the tyrant. "What?" he says; "that man kept my daughter a virgin for another." Now he is a husband, who even under the tyrant could be nothing more than a ravisher. The man who was destined to be part of the dowry was left as her guardian. The edict was published, and to escape obeying it we fled. Nothing in the whole stretch of public slavery seemed more unworthy, nothing less to be borne by gods and men. And so the tyrant was killed after this. The girl was betrothed; everything was done according to the tyrant's edict.

6.6. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. An excellent son-in-law, whose one glory is that, compared with the crucified, he is more frugal. The slave guarded his mistress better than the father his daughter. The kindly father so bestowed his daughter as the angry tyrant bestowed others' daughters. Your enemies pray that you may have grandsons. When the father was sane, he fled rather than see this marriage. Do you think it too small a proof of madness that he drove the tyrant to death, the fathers into exile, the slaves to the cross? How is it that you, who flee thus, give in marriage thus? You are more honourable as an exile than as a father-in-law. If you wish to find your son-in-law's kinsmen, you must go to the cross.

6.7. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. From a slave he has become a son-in-law, from a mistress a wife, from a master a father-in-law. Who would not think this marriage a tyrant's? I accuse the father of the tyrant's crimes, the tyrant of the father's. What shall I complain of in the tyrant? He is like the father. What shall I not complain of in the father? He is like the tyrant. Most wretched sister, under the tyrant you longed for your father, under your father you long for the tyrant. You forced upon your daughter what the tyrant had only permitted. Now, father, if you are sane, we must go into exile. For what more wretched thing can befall than that condition in freedom which others scarcely endure in slavery? We fled lest we be slaves. He turned our happiness into calamity: for it was far better to bear insult with the rest than, when all were freed, to be cast back, alone, into tyranny. To the slave he gave freedom, to his daughter slavery. To the slave he gave his daughter, from her he took her innocence. I know not what he means by praising the slave's merit: he ought to have praised the tyrant. Our slave, not foolish, preferred his hide and his head to present delights. If he says that he merely feared so great a crime, I will praise him and will wish him even now this same mind.

6.8. Other women have found themselves honourable husbands; this one has such a husband as they had under the tyranny. My sister is a maidservant's rival, and, that the mistress might marry, the fellow-slave was thrown out of her little cell. There was no greater crime in the tyrant than the one it pleased you to imitate. O you, sister, wretched, that you did not suffer this under the tyrant! For by now you would have ceased to suffer. Do you think this a reward — that, because he did not violate his mistress, he may violate her as much as he wishes? But this man, as you will say, did you an injury, because he delayed your kinship; if he had not held back, perhaps we should already have grandchildren from him. Let us have, if we can, a son-in-law our equal; if not, then one not to be blushed at, who has some kinsman, who has some sacred things and an inner shrine into which a wife may be led, whom we may join to our house, not one whom we should strike off our census.

6.9. OF PORCIUS LATRO. We who had borne everything, this we flee. He summons the slave and, because he had not deserved the cross, bids him deserve it. So, gallows-bird, could you embrace your mistress? Did you think either that the tyrant would live forever, or that the father would forever be merciful? Most fortunate will those women seem to whom a tyrant's rape befell. So, no doubt, he did her a kindness, in that he guarded his mistress from defilement, himself from the cross? When the new bride was being led with the unlucky torch to her dowry-slave, if there is any faith in me, I shuddered as though the edict were restored. I was considering what husband to choose for my sister. I will confess plainly: I now disdained the matches which had been available before our departure; I said: "In that time other maidens too were virgins." "He did not violate her," he says, "under the tyranny." O happy us, if not even now!

6.10. OF TRIARIUS. Come, is this not a reward — to watch, alone, the crosses of all? I am sure that, if the tyrant had had a daughter, he would not have written the edict. He proclaims a festal day, he orders the images of the ancestors to be opened, when most of all they should be covered. OF VARIUS GEMINUS. In the same hour he made him both freedman and son-in-law. You did what a tyrant does not compel except when he is angry, and does not even then make men slaves when he is compelled. What sort of son-in-law have you? — that I may render him his own praise — a thrifty slave, to be sure. Your slave-women will bear brothers for your daughter. As for the setting-out of the facts, the evils of the tyranny are indeed bitter, yet I will set out things still sadder that were done after the tyranny. I did not doubt that she would marry the tyrannicide. If she had been violated under the tyrant, we should have had this consolation: "It has not befallen you alone." I think the tyrant not yet slain; even now I see a tyrant's marriage.

6.11. OF MARULLUS. Now I shall know whether you deserved your liberty, if as a free man you do not deserve the cross. The thing I charge, the man who did it to more women was killed. OF P. VINICIUS. Now in our house there is a marriage of which I should be ashamed even if it were a rape. How wretched do you think those men, judges, for whom the two most wretched things had to be wished for — a tyrant and a ravisher? The one recommendation of your son-in-law is that once he thought himself unworthy of this girl. OF VALLIUS SYRIACUS. We are in such a condition, judges, that we must console our sister either because she was not raped or because she has married. And yet what did he deserve, while it was permitted him by his master to be a most innocent slave?

6.12. OF SEPULLIUS BASSUS. We made the wedding with the house shut up. The slave's mistress was led into common quarters with him: so did this fellow not touch my sister's hand except while being freed? OF ASINIUS POLLIO. Amid the wedding Fescennines they jested about the cross of our son-in-law. I remember spending a most wretched day, when the state began to be enslaved; I remember spending a most wretched day, when we fled into exile: among these days I count my sister's wedding. Most wretched sister, perhaps you are stepmother to your own home-bred slaves. "Father, I wish to take a wife: say which of the maidservants you betroth to me." Against. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. He saved his mistress. If anyone had informed the tyrant, he alone would have hung on the cross.

6.13. The division. Latro divided into these questions: whether, even if he ought not to have given his daughter in marriage thus, he cannot for this reason be condemned for madness. "It is lawful," he says, "for me to give my daughter to whom I will: by that reasoning I shall be accused even if I send my son-in-law a notice of divorce. I gave my daughter in marriage badly: so have many others. What do you think of those who take their daughters away from . . . but he gave her badly . . . nor shall I be condemned for this. You ought to accuse a father who is mad, not to govern one who is sane. Whether I did this without reason, we shall see: it is enough if I did it with a sound mind." Then: whether he ought to have given his daughter in marriage thus. This he divided into this: whether, even if the slave deserved well, gratitude ought not to have been repaid him thus; then, whether he deserved well. About the slave's deed he disputed first, then about his intention. For of what sort is the deed? He did not defile his mistress. Increase the kindnesses: he neither killed his master nor, as an adulterer, gave his master poison. It is no kindness to abstain from crime. And the tyrant permitted men to ravish their mistresses, he did not compel them. Then preserve this kindness of his which you praise: otherwise he did an injury, if she was not rescued from injury but reserved for it. Yet there would have been this consolation, to suffer along with many. Finally, other women suffered under the tyranny, this one in freedom; the rest with their own people away, this one with them present; in the others it was called defilement, in this one marriage; in the others an end of the injury was awaited, in this one none; finally, the ravishers of those women were nailed to the cross, the ravisher of this one was set free.

6.14. Then about the slave's intention. LATRO made this colour on the son's side, as to why the slave had not defiled her: that he feared punishment, that he knew it would come about, when the state was freed, that all who had defiled their mistresses would pay the penalty; and the last hour seemed already drawing near to a tyranny then driven to the height of madness, which never arises except from desperation. "And so, when he saw," he said, "slaves being nailed to the cross, he cried out: 'This I knew would come to pass.'" In his closing speech Latro said: "In the slave's name too I can complain of you, who made him, who had been thrifty, worthless." ALBUCIUS used this colour: "The girl was still unripe and not yet fit for injury, and for that reason we did not take her away — because, by the benefit of her age, she could not feel the tyranny."

6.15. CESTIUS said: "I plainly will not detract from the slave his own praise: he had a good mind; he hoped it might come about that, if he kept her a virgin, he would be freed at his mistress's wedding." VARIUS GEMINUS said: "Perhaps he had a mistress; in her he found delight — for some men shrink from the embrace of virgins. Perhaps he knew she would not yield, and — the thing which sometimes makes even worthless slaves thrifty — he feared evil fortune." And he added this sententia, which was much circulated: "Would the gallows-bird have dared to lie with his mistress, unless the father had permitted him?" And he said this: "Was it for this, father, that you had returned from exile?

6.16. Into exile, then, why did we flee?" BUTEO wished the father to seem really deranged in mind, and in the narration said this: "How sad he came home from the tyrant's edict! How he wept in his daughter's bosom! I think that at that time his mind was shaken." VARIUS GEMINUS thus on the abstinence: "He did not dare to defile his mistress and drag her into his cell. Unless perhaps you prefer me to tell it thus: even then he had begun to hope for his marriage with his mistress."

6.17. On the father's side Latro said that there was need rather of defence than of colour. VARIUS GEMINUS defended the deed itself: that great men had married freedwomen as wives. "M. Cato," he said, "married the daughter of his own tenant farmer." "But a freeborn one." I answer: "But Cato; there is more difference between me and Cato than between a freedman and a tenant." What advantages would a submissive and obedient husband have! He will fear no wantonness, no insult of words, no rival, no divorce. I shall always have my daughter at home;

6.18. for whom I long the more, because I was so long away from her. Then he praised the freedman's deed. ALBUCIUS even turned philosopher; he said that no one was born free, no one a slave; that fortune afterwards imposed these names upon individuals. "In short," he said, "you know that we too were lately slaves." He recalled King Servius. POMPEIUS SILO, using this colour, said: "My patrimony was exhausted by the injuries of the tyranny; I had no dowry to give." ARGENTARIUS wished it to seem that he had done it with the girl's consent. "She seemed," he said, "to favour him; certainly she ought to have."

6.19. GAVIUS SABINUS used this colour, so as to pull down his own dignity as far as he could and to confess his lowliness. "And for this reason," he said, "he could the more easily avoid being defiled, because no one directed his eyes toward our house. And I had considered," he said, "what to do, to whom to give her in marriage: I had to seek some freedman as a son-in-law. What then? Another man's freedman rather? This one I now know; I know what his feeling is toward us; if I die, I know I shall leave my daughter safe with him." And he added this sententia, which was much taken up:

6.20. I did not scorn as a son-in-law the man who had scorned a tyrant. ACCIUS POSTUMIUS used this colour: "Nothing," he said, "is more dangerous than envy; this wise men teach us to avoid as a pestilence: this I have avoided. There was great envy: everyone reproached us with the fortune of our children. The women hated my daughter, the fathers hated me, as though I were set apart from the common misery and reproached them with it: in the one way I honourably could, I made my daughter like the rest, my fortune equal to the public fortune; all envy is taken away; I have no daughter more honourable than yours, but I had a slave more frugal than you."

6.21. HISPO ROMANIUS had said: "Shall I call this man a husband — a late ravisher?" This word, as not used among the ancients, displeased some men. In the same sense of the word, but so as to be beyond reproach, GAVIUS SABINUS used it, saying that the public vengeance against slaves had not yet been completed: "Even now in our house there remains a leftover ravisher."

6.22. FURIUS SATURNINUS, who condemned Volesus, had a greater name in the forum than in declamations; yet he used to declaim so honourably that you would know him not less fitted for this material, but less familiar with it. He, in this controversia, declaiming with the son of L. Lamia, said this sententia: "The father has become worse than a tyrant, the slave better than himself." Many tried to draw a sententia from the deed of purchase. ALBUCIUS said: "Bring me the tablets.

6.23. What is this? The father-in-law took the son-in-law by formal conveyance." TRIARIUS said: "'Not a runaway, not a vagrant': so, if we have a bad vendor, is our son-in-law a runaway?" BLANDUS said: "Let us read the warranty-tablets: 'free from theft and damage.' This is the praise of our son-in-law." GALLIO said: "He is free from theft, free from damage." SPARSUS said: "Show the tablets. What have we to do with this son-in-law? The former owner warranted that he was not a runaway. I congratulate you, posterity: you will not have a runaway father." VARIUS GEMINUS said: "'Not a vagrant'; I add, not a runaway; I add, free from damage and theft. Have I detracted at all from your son-in-law's nobility?"

6.24. Pollio used to say that he laughed because the declaimers had decreed that this man was at all events bought-and-paid-for. I think you wonder that in this controversia all the declaimers were of sound mind. They were not. NEPOS MAMILIUS, when he was urging the freedman to divorce the sister, said: "Repay us the favour, and do you too set my sister free." NEPOS LICINIUS did not yield to him; for he said: "Pass beneath these benches, slaves, pass over, freedmen — bought-and-paid-for kindred." And when he had taken up that elegant thought, bandied about by everyone — "Sister, I wish you barrenness" — he added: "Nor is there reason for you to wonder that I fear your offspring: I am quite sure that tyrants are born thus."

7.1. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. What more do you require? The commander bore the punishment, the traitor the price. We saw this man gloomier when his son was proclaimed commander than when he was captured. Give an account, old man, how you returned safe, alone, with the gold, when even commanders are captured. The young man was proclaimed commander, all rejoicing except his father.

7.2. OF CESTIUS PIUS. He received more gold than could be hidden. Do not wonder: he had sold both the commander and his son. "Beware of treason." We have already guarded against it at the elections. The enemy would have taken your gold from you, had they not given it. When the ransom was being discussed, all were in the senate-house except his rival. "Beware of treason." The dying man's information was brief, the son's was modest. OF BLANDUS. How did they let you go? If nothing else, you both begot a leader and wished to be one yourself. If we had not decreed it, you ought to have awaited our counsel; if we had decreed it, your duty. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. Whence those folds of the father so heavy? Do they perhaps bring back the bones of his son? The defendant, no doubt, awaits your verdicts — as though he did not know what you think of him. Not once were you among the enemy, but once we sent envoys. The commander does not dare to name you — as his father. OF JUNIUS GALLIO.

7.3. He was an excellent young man, most modest, who would have yielded to his father if he could have done so with his duty unimpaired. Again we must judge between you — between father and son. The candidate came forward against his father: if we had known how to understand his silence, even then he had modestly given us information. You had authority among the enemy: it was plain that you were angry with the state. Our envoys were bringing gold; the father was carrying it off. You had said that they would come too late: they did not come too late; they met our commander. The commander accuses this man, we subscribe to the charge.

7.4. This was our commander's testament. "Bring," he says, "some charges of his earlier life." I cannot: you had a modest rival; he was much silent. What greater charge can I bring against you? Your own son did not wish the state to be entrusted to you. There is no reason for you to say, "Whom did I send to the enemy?" — as though you could not go yourself. Why do you return so quickly? You begged us against your son longer than you begged the enemy for him. You did not stand motionless, you did not cling there as though you too were fastened up. Why do you withdraw so quickly? He is still alive, still speaking. About to withdraw, ask whether he wishes to give any charge. By his voice he convicts the treason, by his silence the traitor.

7.5. I understand at how great a peril I offend this man. For how will he avenge the accusation? By the cross. He is hard pressed by every argument: I will give those who saw, I will give those who heard, I will give the gold, I will give a witness, and — that no doubt may be possible about his rank — a commander. Let him say of this man what he will: "He is an enemy"; this man gave the information. Was there so much gold that it was plain even to those not seeking it, or were you so suspect that the treason, which we were bidden to beware of, put any man in mind of you? An excellent young man, an excellent commander, who did not cease to care for the state even on the cross, his son thought you unworthy of being told:

7.6. "Beware of treason." OF VARIUS GEMINUS. Do not expect everything from an accuser both preoccupied and modest: understand the defendant; you have heard the charges. Do you ask for charges of his earlier life? I have none: your son never wished to reproach you with anything. So quickly have your prayers tired? What will the poor wretch do? The commander cannot keep silent about the treason, nor the son speak of the traitor.

7.7. OF PORCIUS LATRO. What is safe from this treason, which has already reached as far as the commander? I fear lest we beware as late as our commander, who did not understand the treason before he was betrayed; and never was peril more present: the state is without a commander, the traitor without a guard. For what reason is there why the enemy should spare you? You are both the father of our commander and you have gold and you are no envoy. If I should say to you, "Wait until envoys are sent; your son is being sent back to you officially," you would say: "A father's feeling does not bear delay; longing for my son hurries me on; even if I cannot ransom him alive, at least I will ransom him dead; never was an enemy so hard as not to be bent by a father's tears."

7.8. Though I forgive you that you went so quickly, I will charge you that you returned so quickly. Say what he said to you. Or did he wish to say nothing to his father? "Beware of treason." This he meant: see that no one go out by night without the guards' knowledge, that no one reach the enemy without the state's knowledge, that no one return from the enemy's camp heavy with gold. Nothing is wanting to the information. If you ask anything about the treason, the commander will tell you; if anything about the traitor, the envoys.

7.9. The other side. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS. What is the price for which I sell this — that as a father I should watch my son on the cross, as a son my father from the cross? For so much did I sell both the commander and a parricide? All congratulated me, on my defeat more lavishly than on my designation — too ostentatiously. Now they repent. The man who sold both his son and his country received gold so scant that a single old man could carry it.

7.10. In this controversia, although it is conjectural and has, as it were, a fixed and well-worn road, there was nevertheless some disagreement among the declaimers. Latro always contracted, and whatever he could safely leave he passed over. So he both lessened the number of the questions and never dragged in the commonplaces; and even those which he had taken up he did not develop at length, but forcefully. This at all events was his precept: that a declaimer ought, like a praetor, to do certain things for the sake of lessening the suit. This he did in this controversia; for he did not trouble to say that no treason had been committed, but that he himself was no traitor. "For he too is suspect to the judge," he said, "who defends more than himself; and I do not wish," he said, "to fight with the son's voice, so as to say that the commander and son lied — especially when hatred against the son is charged against the father." ALBUCIUS divided the declamation into two parts: first he denied that there was any treason; then:

7.11. supposing there were, that it did not pertain to him. SILO POMPEIUS introduced this colour against the father: that he had done it out of hatred of the state, by which he had been rejected, and out of hatred of his very son, whom he hated both because he had stood against him and because he had conquered. VARIUS GEMINUS said that the father had sought the command at once with this design, that he might betray it. "A grasping man and gaping after gain — for his ways were known — conquered by that rival by whom it was not right to be conquered save by a most base man. Before the elections," he said, "he had been ready to take money to destroy his son; after the elections he was ready to give money to destroy his son. When the leader was captured we said," he said, "'This cannot happen without treason.' We excused ourselves to the commander: we said that we had persevered toward the ransom, although the father had deterred us. At this point he answered: 'Beware of treason.'"

7.12. BLANDUS said that, taking ill the shame of his defeat, he had wished his son killed, so that he himself might be put in his place. HISPO ROMANIUS: "His revenge," he said, "he sold to the enemy. So easily," he said, "did he go out, reach the enemy by night, and return, that you would know he had not done it then for the first time." ARGENTARIUS said: "Carry to the senate your son's instructions. He must have told you many things; to the envoys too he entrusted some; perhaps he told his father the traitor's name; inform us. 'He told me,' he says, 'nothing.' The whole question is removed. Do you ask whom he named? See to whom he told nothing." For the father, on the elections, this was Latro's colour:

7.13. "I feared lest anyone should defeat my son; and so I declared my candidacy, that by my authority I might deter future rivals; then I yielded to my son." ALBUCIUS used this colour: "Some said," he said, "that the commander ought to be a young man such as Scipio had been, others an old man such as Maximus was; the old man, they said, would do nothing rashly. I gave the people the opportunity of both." CESTIUS used this colour: "I knew my son's faults; I knew he was a keen young man, brave, but inconsiderate and rash. And so I sought the command both for the state's sake and for my son's, whom I did not think fit to bear so great a burden."

7.14. FUSCUS ARELLIUS said that he had become a candidate for this, that the enemy's spirits might be broken when they heard that the state could choose a leader even from a single house. HISPO ROMANIUS thought one ought to plead plainly: "These colours," he said, "are silly, when rivals are presented." And so he conducted his case with this colour, complaining of the outcome of the elections: that all the young men had conspired, as though it were a contest about comparison of age; and so the old man, not canvassing, was easily beaten. "Of me," he said, "you cannot complain; I cried out: 'A commander of this age is not useful to you.' There remained in him," he said, "even after the elections the same defiance: he referred nothing to his father, communicated nothing; and so he was captured." And when he had described how unskilfully he had drawn up his line, how his rashness had been crushed by ambushes in unexplored places, he added: "This is what I kept crying out to you: 'Choose an old man for commander.'"

7.15. OTHO JUNIUS the elder said that, agitated by certain omens and dreams foretelling this fortune, he had become a candidate. Now Otho was one of the dreamers: wherever his colour failed him, he related a dream. About the fact that he went out without the senate's knowledge, LATRO gave this colour: that he had not awaited the decree, but, frantic and thunderstruck, had at once rushed forth. ALBUCIUS used this colour: "It is always by decree of the senate that a leader is appointed. It was long to wait; in short, I hurried and did not arrive in time."

7.16. VARIUS GEMINUS said that he had preferred to go alone; for the enemy are not moved by the authority of envoys, but are often bent by the tears of fathers. SILO POMPEIUS said: "I thought it more useful that he be ransomed with private money: for he could be valued at less than if he were ransomed as a commander." ARGENTARIUS said: "Nothing was so unfair as that envoys should be sent for the ransom; for they would never have given back the man whom they had thus judged to be missed officially. And so I ran on ahead, meaning to plead and to say this: 'The army despises him, the state abandons him.'"

7.17. BLANDUS said: "As I was considering what to do — whether to be content with a father's tears or to support my prayers with a public escort — at last it came into my mind that the Trojan king went to ransom his son without envoys and with gold." SEPULLIUS BASSUS said that he had not awaited the senate, because he thought there would be those who would say the man ought not to be ransomed — a thing that had happened often enough among the Romans; and so he had wished to ransom him before anything could be decided about not ransoming. CESTIUS said: "I did not seek secret by-ways and a hidden route: a traitor, I came by the same road as the envoys." On the son's voice ALBUCIUS made this colour:

7.18. "He was ashamed," he said, "that he had been captured; he sought some defence for his fortune; he wished it to seem that this had befallen him not by his own fault but by treason: and so he could not add the name." FUSCUS ARELLIUS said that his mind, already estranged by his sufferings and wandering, had poured out these words without arguments, without a defendant. VARIUS GEMINUS embraced everything: "It can be," he said, "for this reason, it can be for that; I advise you the same thing:

7.19. beware of treason. If you wish to beware of it, make old men your commanders." This too, both in this controversia and in every one, CESTIUS used to say must be avoided: whenever some saying is set down, that we should not run to it as to a sententia. Just as in this case, at Cestius's school, a certain hearer of his began thus: "That I may begin with your leader's words, judges: beware of treason"; and so he ended his declamation, saying: "I end with the words with which the commander ended his life: beware of treason." This kind of sententia Cestius called echo, and to a pupil who used it he would at once exclaim: "Hail, Echo!" As in that suasoria in which Alexander deliberates whether to sail the Ocean, when a voice had been heard, "How far, unconquered one?" — from that voice a certain man began his declamation, and on this he ended; Cestius said to him as he ended: "With you I shall cease, and from you I shall begin." And to another, when, after describing Alexander's victories and the nations subdued, he set at the last: "How far, unconquered one?"

7.20. — Cestius exclaimed: "And you, how far?" OTHO the elder used this colour for the father: for he said that it was distressing to the commander that the envoys were looking at him nailed up; and so, to detach them from this spectacle and to relieve his own shame, he had said the thing which, on hearing, they would make them hurry away. And so he had said not "Let them beware of treason," but "Beware" — as though for the envoys themselves there was danger lest they be betrayed.

8.1. Apart from the fact that in every crisis liberty is dangerous, the girl has deserved that we keep silent: she was merciful to us, even before we asked. Liberty is inhuman, if we conquer against the judge. You ought not to be allowed to choose more than once. All excessive power is most healthfully confined within narrow limits. Let him who can condemn be able to do it once; let him who can kill be able to do it once; or if any repetition can be admitted, it must be admitted only into repentance of death. Set before yourselves that face of punishment — the executioner, the axe: even this once permitted is too much. "I was won over, I sheathe the sword: I am angry, I take back my choice."

8.2. And is it not better to die only once? Kill now not the ravisher, but the husband. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Is it more dangerous to deny a rape than to commit it? The young man had been led into such confusion that he did not know what he had done. Yet he did not shrink from marriage with the girl; he only favoured himself so far as to marry as an innocent man. And so he sought nothing else than freedom, that he might marry more honourably. So, before you, judges, is it safer to sin than to blush? He would have been more worthy of punishment if he had sinned in a way that he could remember. Rise, young man, and without any regard for your shame cast yourself at the girl's feet; come too, friends and kinsmen, and you, mother, and you, father. What is it, girl? Do these men's tears move you at all? "No," she says; "let the magistrate come to him." I do not dissemble: I fear you, girl, if you wish to be entreated nowhere but where you can kill. I am punished more heavily now, when I am ashamed of having sinned, than when I sinned. The woman who pardons after the injury grows angry after the mercy.

8.3. OF CESTIUS PIUS. He comes to you, by your kindness, to keep the girl's kindness. He chose marriage; nor did he yet know what a modest husband he was going to have. You let the ravisher go; will you kill the husband? The judge said: "What have you, that you deny so obstinately? She chooses marriage. Is then what he did in ravishing less than what he did in denying?" OF Q. HATERIUS. "I shall not choose death," she said, "but I wish it to be lawful for me even to choose death." The power that delights in this is cruel. OF BLANDUS. So have we denied the injury more dangerously than we did it?

8.4. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. On a certain night — what shall I say? now it is shameful even to deny it. Night, wine, error — why are you angry, girl? Now I dare not deny. My case was not pleaded carefully: while you feared nothing, you the more easily entrusted me to the girl. We must confess our fault: we caused delay to the marriage. Whether she had still been violated or not, she seemed worthy of marriage who could not kill a man. I was taking thought for you, that you might not be said to be married to a ravisher: if it had been allowed you, you would have had a more honourable husband. Did you deny it? O shameless man! So did you not cry aloud, before the magistrate's tribunal, in the people's sight, in the middle of the forum, "I raped a virgin"? You can have no husband so compliant as this: he will now deny nothing.

8.5. OF VARIUS GEMINUS. I will set out the order of events to you as though I had learned it from a man who does not know what he did. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. Where are you who used to say, "It is no concern of yours: confess"? He confesses because you thought it more honourable to marry a ravisher. "Let him be my heir," she says, "if any child is born within ten months." Does she deny it at all? Rise, young man, say, "I raped, I violated"; begin to know what you do not know: do you wonder that she does not believe you? There is much about which she is afraid.

8.6. The other side. OF P. ASPRENAS. I do not know in which trial my opponent was the more shameless. In the earlier he aimed at this — to pay no penalty for the rape at all; in this he aims to choose himself which of the two punishments fixed by the law he wishes to pay. For he confesses that he preferred to go unpunished rather than to marry a wife; to marry a wife rather than to die. Before, he tried to overturn the law of violation; now he wishes to transfer it: he asks the advocates — let not this free him from fear, the fact that he knows the clemency of his own judge. He kept crying that he was innocent; if he had committed any sin, he did not refuse to die. The people stood by the ravisher, and nothing made the violated girl's case more suspect than the leniency of the choice. If now your defilement is clear to you, there is a certain modesty next to innocence — to offer oneself to the laws: but you did not even deserve death by that denial. Did you not know whether you had sinned? You wished to be innocent. You have your case: return to your parents, girl, since indeed you so often beg, who ought yourself to have been begged.

8.7. LATRO made three questions: whether, he asked, that choice was lawful. "It was not lawful," he says; "for it was not established that you were a ravisher." "It makes no difference," he says, "whether he denied it. For he was a ravisher even if he denied it, and so the choice was lawful." Whether, if the choice was unlawful, it can be recalled. "The choice," he says, "is given to the girl once; it is unchangeable, the moment it is uttered. The judge cannot recall the verdict he has given on a defendant; the examiner will not change his pronouncement; nothing is so civic, so useful, as that a power which is great should be brief. If she wishes to recall both her second choice and then her third, it will never be settled what is to happen, since she can always rescind by a following choice what she had chosen." He made a third question: whether, if a choice can sometimes be recalled, it ought now to be. Here is the defence of the young man, because he denied that he had violated her.

8.8. FUSCUS both changed the order of the questions and increased their number; for he made the first question: whether the raped girl cannot choose more than once. "She can," he says; "for the law does not add how often she may choose, but from which choices: 'either this,' it says, 'or that'; it does not add, 'no more than once.'" Against this he says: "The law bids you choose one of the two; if today you choose death, you will do what was never done: you will have chosen both." "Even if it is not lawful," he says, "more than once, I have not yet chosen: for that is a choice which is made lawfully; that one was not made lawfully. If the praetor had been absent, would you call it a choice? If the ravisher had been absent? The ravisher was absent: that is not a choice; it is mere talk." Whether the choice was confirmed by the previous trial. The ravisher says: "It was argued before the judges whether the choice ought to be valid or not; it was judged that it ought to be valid: let it be valid." "No," says the girl; "for the question was whether I had a right over the ravisher; it was judged that I had: I must use it. I cannot have the law before I have the ravisher." He made a last question, of equity: whether the choice ought to be valid.

8.9. Passienus divided this last part thus: whether, if the young man with evil intent toward the girl denied the rape in order to escape the marriage, he deserves to undergo once more the fortune of the choice he refused. Then: whether he acted with evil intent. VARIUS GEMINUS added to the last question, or part — in which it is asked what ought to be done — these two things which he thought could be asked: whether, if the girl is certain to choose the young man's death, the choice ought not to be allowed her, since she would use her power so cruelly; then, whether she will choose death. "What reason have you," he says, "to wish to choose, except that you do not wish the marriage? This we not only endure, but ask for."

8.10. The colour for the young man introduced by LATRO was this: that he should say he had been drunk and did not know what he had done; that even today he rather believed than knew about his own deed; that he had refused, not so as not to marry a wife, but so as to marry of his own will; and that the judges had not listened anxiously, but had been lenient, as though the matter concerned the marriage. VARIUS GEMINUS confessed the rape, and said that nothing was so contrary to the young man's interest as still to deny it: he would offend not only the raped girl, but the judge. CESTIUS neither followed Latro, who said he had not known and did not even now know, nor Varius Geminus, who confessed, but denied the rape more openly. "The truth," he said, "could not be found out; the judges followed that sententia: 'If he raped, it is shameful that the girl go unavenged; if he did not rape, it is not shameful that he become her husband.'" SILO POMPEIUS said that the young man, modest by nature and of rustic shyness, had not endured to confess. The colour did not please LATRO: "He will be the less pardoned," he said, "if he knows that he raped her and knowingly lied." SILO argued against this, that no one could be made to believe that a man does not know whether he raped her.

8.11. HISPANUS CORNELIUS: "I did not wish," he said, "to take her husband from her, but to give her a more honourable one. She is worthy," he said, "so merciful a girl, that she should not seem to have married a ravisher." HISPO ROMANIUS said that those comrades who had urged him on by night had stood round him and said: "It is not the girl you raped; it was another." He feared lest he do an injury to the girl he had raped. ARGENTARIUS said: "I could wish you had chosen death: this man would not have been judged a ravisher. It is not your case that presses him, but the choice, while each several judge says: 'What has he that he should so refuse? You would think his life were at stake; and he himself says he is not unwilling to marry a wife, but refuses the title. Of course, when conquered he will marry the wife. There is no need to judge anxiously concerning one whom we must congratulate even when condemned.'" SILO used this colour: that the young man, suddenly confused and in so great an uproar, had not been sufficiently in command of himself; and that he had denied it because he was confused, and persisted because he had denied it.