Book 8

pr.1. . . . I was looking round, however, to see whether anything had escaped me. Of your own accord you brought up the mention of Votienus Montanus; and I should like you from time to time to offer me certain names by which my memory may be called forth, which, as an old man's, wilts of itself, but, when prompted and at times provoked, easily gathers itself together. MONTANUS VOTIENUS so never declaimed for the sake of display that he did not declaim even for the sake of practice. When I asked him the reason, he said: "Which do you want — the honourable one or the true one? If the honourable one, that I may not get into a bad habit. The man who prepares a declamation writes not in order to win, but in order to please. And so he hunts up every allurement; he abandons argumentation, because it is tedious and has the least bloom in it; he is content to soothe his hearers with sententiae and elaborations. For he desires to win approval for himself, not for his case."

pr.2. And this fault follows declaimers right into the forum — that they desert what is necessary while they pursue what is showy. There is added also this, that they invent opponents however foolish; they answer them both what they wish and when they wish. Besides, there is nothing to chastise their error with any loss; their folly is cost-free. And so a dangerous stupor, scarcely to be cured even in a man about to plead in the forum, can hardly be shaken off, having grown while it was safe. What of the fact that they are sustained by frequent applause, and their memory has grown used to resting at fixed intervals? When they have come into the forum and the applause has ceased to take up their every gesture, they either fail or falter.

pr.3. Add now that bile is roused by no one's interruption: no one laughs, no one deliberately speaks against them; the faces of all are friendly. In the forum, if nothing else, the forum itself disturbs them. This thing which is commonly told, whether it be true, you can better know: that LATRO PORCIUS, the one model of declamatory excellence, when he was pleading for a defendant in Spain, his kinsman Rusticus Porcius, was so confounded that he began with a solecism, and could not recover himself — longing for the hall and the wall — until he obtained

pr.4. that the trial be transferred from the forum into the basilica. To such a degree are talents delicately nursed in school exercises, that they cannot bear the shout, the silence, the laughter — in short, the open sky. But practice is not useful unless it is most like the work for which it trains; and so it is usually harder than the real contest. Gladiators learn with heavier weapons than they fight with; their master keeps them armed longer than their adversary. Athletes wear out two or three opponents at once, that they may more easily withstand single ones. Runners, though their speed is judged within a small space, often run in training the distance they are to run once in the contest. The labour by which we learn is deliberately multiplied, that it may be lightened by which we decide.

pr.5. In school declamations the opposite happens: everything is softer and looser. In the forum they accept their side, in the school they choose it; there they coax the judge, here they command. There the mind must be braced amid the roar of a crowd murmuring together, and the voice carried through to the judge's ears; here the faces of all hang upon the speaker's face. And so, just as men coming out of a shady and dark place are blinded by the brightness of clear light, so these men, passing from the schools into the forum, are confounded by everything as new and unwonted, nor are they hardened into orators until, mastered by many insults, they have toughened by real labour their boyish mind, grown languid through scholastic delights. LEPIDUS, an excellent man, who by no declamatory pursuit . . .

1.1. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. My own peril does not move me: always in our misfortunes we have looked not to fortune but to the cause. I do not doubt that Callias would have ransomed Miltiades, if he had then had a marriageable daughter. OF MUSA. One man cannot endure one thing, another another. For me adultery is a prison. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. "Nothing," he says, "can I give my daughter greater than Cimon for a husband. When shall I have grandsons from him?" Shall I throw away the sword handed me by the law for the avenging of chastity? You have lost your money, Callias, if you freed such hands. The man condemned for embezzlement left his heir nothing else than himself for a father.

1.2. OF CESTIUS PIUS. A high-born spirit cannot endure insult. Rightly did you long to have grandsons from Cimon. What did you approve in me more than the prison? I am no more innocent than my father — nor even more fortunate; this one thing is the difference between father's fortune and son's, that for him the prison was the end of his calamities, for me their beginning. I will set out to you how toward none of my own kin I am ungrateful. Cimon, a son, was found to be Miltiades's whole estate; not even he had anything to give for his father except himself. I could have hoped for marriage in the house of Cynegirus, I could have hoped in that of Callimachus; nor did I fear

1.3. that Cynegirus would value his own hands more highly. Cimon ransomed is the happiness of his ransomer. OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. You are now making me say it: I did not receive a kindness, or I repaid it. I shall repay it the more surely when you are missed as honourably as you gave. Shall I let adulterers go? What else should I do, if I still had my hands bound? Grief drove me on, thunderstruck. By Hercules, Miltiades my father would not have won me over. I owe Callias nothing — except that I am free. Callias is an excellent man, he is merciful; but would that he were so only toward the good! The injury is greater if Cimon's hands are now bound than was the kindness when they were then loosed. He did not lose his daughter with a more unfair spirit than I my wife, but with a fairer spirit he chose to endure an unchaste woman. Will you hide your riches, when they have fallen in with men who are reckoned by their beggary? Our house has nothing better to show than its poverty. Give money to Miltiades to pay off his condemnation, and he will be guilty; give it to Cimon to ransom his father, and he will not be dutiful.

1.4. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. In nothing do I seem to myself more fortunate than that I was the price of Miltiades. Bound there lay the avenger of Persia's power, the champion of public liberty; bound there lay the reproach of an ungrateful city. Shall I dismiss an adulteress for my father — I who do not so much glory that I am Miltiades's son as that I am his substitute? What? Do you think it a punishment to be bound for Miltiades? If I kill only one of them, I must go into exile. What shall I do? Shall I kill? You demand more than you bestowed: for a prison, exile. Shall I not kill? You demand more than you bestowed: you gave one kindness, you ask two. The whole throng of my ancestors seemed to me to murmur round me, saying: "Where are those hands that loosed Miltiades?" There came not into my mind my wife's indulgence, nor Callias my father-in-law, nor the memory of any thing or any kindness;

1.5. I did what I am wont: I looked to nothing else than my father. OF MENTO. Consider that they are adulterers for whom you plead; consider the sort of people you are wont to pity: it is shameful to have both the adulterers and Cimon dismissed by the same man. I am one who does not cease to return gratitude even to the dead: so may it befall me to have true children — which Miltiades has learned how great a thing it is. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Shall I dismiss the adulterers?

1.6. My spirit burns with desire for vengeance. These hands Miltiades could not have held back, which he was able to bind. If you freed them for this, give me back to the prison. That savior and champion of Greece, that tamer of the Persians and the East, on whom fortune had but now conferred so signal a triumph over the enemy, was condemned for embezzlement — for this very purpose, no doubt: that his innocence, which otherwise could have lain hidden, might by the very condemnation be displayed. An innocent man was condemned. Who in the city is merciful? Now the occasion for mercy has come: Miltiades must be ransomed. I ransomed your body, Miltiades, though I was not to be present even at your funeral, on which I had spent myself. I pity my accuser, not because he lost his daughter, but because he had her. Callias was worthy to have such children as he ransomed. But if you ransomed me into this endurance of defilements, I prefer the prison to marriage. It is more honourable to be bound for a father than freed for an adulterer. When I heard that there was a man counting out money, I wondered that there was anyone in our city who would rather ransom Cimon than Miltiades. I would not have ransomed even my own father, had he not been innocent.

1.7. OF BLANDUS. Let him cast chains in my teeth: never will he bring it about that I do not glory more in the prison than in marriage. Men's feelings differ: you perhaps, Callias, cannot bear chains, I cannot bear an adulterous wife. Shall the adulterers then escape, as though Cimon's hands were bound? OF ARGENTARIUS. Ransomed, he at once began to address me about marrying his daughter. "At once," I said, "Callias tests whether I am grateful: you have Callias without Cimon." He asks for one, he snatches two. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. Say now, "I took you from prison," while I answer, "I gave myself to prison." Never will it be brought about that I think it better done that I was ransomed by Callias than that I was bound for Miltiades. Your daughter robbed you of a son-in-law, Cimon. My father was led to prison, even now full of his own captives.

1.8. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. "I did you a kindness," he says, "in that I gave you my daughter in marriage." Now indeed, Miltiades, you bear a fortune heavier than the prison: Callias has deigned to share it with you. I thought myself ransomed; I was bought for his daughter. The images of my ancestors stood before my eyes, and Miltiades, sent out from his place, shone with the majesty of a commander, and again called upon my hands. OF JULIUS BASSUS. I married Callias's daughter: this injury, father, I did you while unwilling to be ungrateful. Please yourself, if you like, and parade those riches: yet I ransomed my father at the same price for which I was ransomed by you.

1.9. The division. Latro divided into these questions: whether everyone who has not returned a kindness, when he could, is liable for ingratitude. "Many things," he says, "intervene, on account of which I ought not to do it, even if I can." If a man is not liable simply because he has not returned a kindness when he could, whether this man is liable. This he divided into these: whether he cannot be condemned for what he did by law; then, whether he ought to have done it; lastly, whether, if he was carried away by feeling and indignation and was not in his own control, he ought to be pardoned. This not as a question, but, as was his custom, by way of treatment or commonplace.

1.10. MONTANUS VOTIENUS added this question: whether Cimon returned the kindness to Callias. "I took your daughter," he said, "to wife; your daughter became Miltiades's daughter-in-law. Do you not count grandchildren shared with Miltiades a kindness?" GALLIO raised that hard question, but pursued it carefully, which is wont to be first in controversiae about an ungrateful man: whether he received a kindness. "It was no punishment," he said, "for me to be in prison: I had come there of my own will. Do you think I lay more gladly in my own bedchamber? There was then no more honourable place in Athens than the one that had held Miltiades." Then he subjoined that question too: whether he is liable who has received a kindness he did not seek. "I did not ask you," he says; "you gave it to your own ostentation; you thought it pertained to your glory. So would you not have received a kindness if it had fallen to you to free Miltiades?"

1.11. SILO POMPEIUS, on Callias's side, said that he had given two kindnesses: that he had ransomed him, and that he had given his daughter in marriage to one in want. This second one no one else reckoned as a kindness, in which it so far is none, that, as it is doubtful whether he did not give a kindness, so it is doubtful whether he did not receive one. BRUTUS BRUTTEDIUS besides made these questions: whether, if Callias did this for his own sake, in ransoming Cimon it is a kindness. "For a kindness," he says, "is what is wholly bestowed for the sake of the one on whom it is conferred. Where a man either hopes or prepares something for himself from it, it is not a kindness; it is a calculation." And he pursued this at length, with both arguments and examples. Then, whether Callias did it for his own sake. "You wished," he says, "to escape the reputation of meanness by a brilliant deed; you sought from this an everlasting memory. The man by whom Cimon was freed could no more be unknown than the man for whom he was bound. You wished to have a son-in-law noble and dutiful." HISPO ROMANIUS made a hard question: whether he returned the kindness by this very act, that he killed the adulterers. "I freed you," he says, "from the greatest disgrace; I gave you a kindness against your will. There is no reason for you to wonder; for you too ransomed me when I did not ask." Here he cited the Virginiuses and those fathers who killed their violated daughters, who shut them up.

1.12. The colour both to GALLIO and to Latro and to Montanus seemed best: that nothing be said insultingly against Callias, both ransomer and father-in-law and unhappy man. CESTIUS said many things against the miser and usurer and money-changer and pander, while he wished to prove this, that he had returned the kindness in having endured to have such a father-in-law. Latro said: "I will dismiss your daughter; what shall I do about the adulterer? You ask for one, you snatch two." This HYBREAS put differently: "And to you, adulterer, what shall I do? Is not Callias your father too?" This whole sententia is different from the former, even though it is drawn from the same material. The other is not like, but the same, which ADAEUS the rhetor said first — one of the Asians, of no mean repute — and then ARELLIUS FUSCUS: "Do I seem to you ungrateful, Callias? You do not know where you bestowed your kindness on me."

1.13. ARELLIUS FUSCUS altered it thus: "You will not call me ungrateful, Callias: consider whence you ransomed me." I remember then that Fuscus, when this sententia of Adaeus was cast in his teeth, did not deny that he had transferred it into Latin, and said that he did this not for the sake of recommendation or theft, but of exercise. "I take pains," he said, "to compete with the best sententiae, nor do I try to corrupt them but to surpass them." Then he quoted some sententia of Thucydides: "For prosperity has a strange power to cover over and overshadow the faults of each man"; then the Sallustian: "Prosperity is wonderfully a screen for vices." Since brevity is the chief virtue in Thucydides, by this Sallust surpassed him and overthrew him in his own camp; for in the Greek sententia, brief as it is, you have what you can take away with the sense unimpaired: remove either "cover over" or "overshadow," remove "of each man"; the sense will hold, even if not equally polished, yet equally entire. But from Sallust's sententia nothing can be taken away without loss to the sense.

1.14. T. Livius, however, was so unfair to Sallust that he charged Sallust with this very sententia both as a translation and as corrupted in the translating. Nor does he do this out of love of Thucydides, to prefer him, but he praises the man whom he does not fear, and thinks Sallust can more easily be conquered by himself if first conquered by Thucydides. CESTIUS had this colour for Callias: he charged Cimon, unbidden, with this — that he had allowed his wife to become an adulteress, that he had not guarded her, that he had waited until the father should come upon them, to become a spectator of his own calamity. "Now," he said, "even if you dismiss them, you are ungrateful. I had not waited until I should be asked."

1.15. HISPO ROMANIUS followed this colour: he said that the young man, swollen and made insolent by the thought of his own nobility, held his kindnesses in hatred, taking it ill that his father-in-law was called Callias; and so he gave all his effort that the girl's morals should not only be allowed to slip into vice, but that he himself should drive them on, so that he might have just cause for divorce. Having got his chance, he did not slay her, but waited until the father should come upon them. He had thought this: "He is waiting for me; he wishes to settle accounts equally with me. He would have done so, had he not shown the father the adulterous daughter." GARGONIUS in this controversia, using a foul kind of false brilliance, said: "That is public adultery — to lie together beneath the trophies of Miltiades." DORION, when he had described that the prison had been a glory to him, said that he had never failed to parade that fortune: "When Callias came in, I uncovered my fetters." HYBREAS said: "I forgive myself."

2.1. OF MENTO. Already even men about to die were asleep. The whole sequence of the punishment is gone through, lest the courtesan should claim she had not seen something. O wretched is he who offends a courtesan! O wretched the matron whose beauty a courtesan envies! The praetor will deny her nothing she asks. OF MUSA. This is Flamininus, who, when about to go out to his province, sent his wife away from the gate. OF ARGENTARIUS. Do I charge him with extravagance, do I charge him with the jokes of actors? Or do you, at a banquet, do nothing else but kill? Men who lived in prison perished at a banquet. OF BLANDUS.

2.2. Let him be struck in the forum; let all see, let the courtesan hear. The leavings of the praetor were dragged off with a hook. I should have said his majesty was injured, if, as you went out, your lictor had not removed the courtesan from your sight. OF VIBIUS RUFUS. The accuser stood ready with his notebooks; he said whatever the courtesan desired. Was it for this that we did not send your wife out with you? That, to keep the province safe, we should pray that the courtesan come to a good mind? We gave you a lieutenant, we gave you a quaestor, that you might dine with a courtesan? The courtesan reclined in the wife's place — nay, in the praetor's. OF P. ASPRENAS.

2.3. With a single kiss, perhaps, she bestowed a murder. Even executioners, about to dine, wash their hands. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Not even by a sober lictor was he struck. I do not inquire into the whole year; I am content with one night. "Drink, lictor, that you may strike the harder." Do you at all understand how a man was condemned who was killed thus? How do I know whether, in whose favour he was killed, he was also condemned by the same person? As much as the Roman people had given you, so much you gave to a courtesan. If she had denied it, what witnesses should I have? For who was at that banquet who deserved belief? It is easier for a man who has given a courtesan other things to deny a murder, than for one who has given her this too to deny anything. Of course this is never wont to be shown before women's eyes — or she would have seen it often already.

2.4. OF JULIUS BASSUS. Amid the drunken leavings of a most lavish dinner and the food that loathing for drunkenness leaves behind, a human head just severed is carried in; amid the sweepings and the leavings flung from the diners and the sawdust strewn at the feast, human blood is swept away. I congratulate you on your lot, province, that, when a courtesan desired such a spectacle, you had a prison full of the condemned. If you had wished a slave whipped, you would have led him away outside the banquet. OF ROMANIUS HISPO. Who would endure you, if you had convened a court in your dining-room? It is a crime to condemn a man at a banquet; what is it to kill one? At a courtesan's pleasure you pronounced judgement on defendants — unless perhaps you behead more readily in her honour than you judge.

2.5. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. I speak of a table stained with human blood, of axes drawn in the dining-room: who would believe that a courtesan desired such things, or that a praetor did them? I speak of a corpse, of axes, of blood: who, amid these, thinks of a banquet? "A man," she says, "I never saw killed." Then under the praetorship of Flamininus did you see everything else? OF SILO POMPEIUS. A most noble man, one who had held such offices, a courtesan would basely have made merciful: she made him cruel. "I never saw it." Add, if you like: "Nor, under another praetor, shall I be able to see it."

2.6. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. But if there is anyone, judges, who would wish me to recount the praetor's cruelty — how many besides this man he butchered, how many innocent men he condemned, how many he shut in prison — to him I do not promise that I will satisfy him: in one banquet, with his praetorship, I will unroll the whole defendant. A feast is set up by this man in the province, and with magnificent equipment a banquet is built up; golden cups are set off by silver ones. In short, judges — the province felt the equipment of his banquet. A certain man is dragged out of prison into the praetor's banquet, and at him, stupefied and wretched, the courtesan smiles. Meanwhile the rods are brought out, and the victim of cruelty is butchered before the table and the gods.

2.7. Wretched me — you mocked the terror of the Roman empire! O you who in cruelty surpassed all tyrants! To you alone, amid the feasting, the groans of the dying are a delight: this was the last course of the dinner. In the same dining-room I see a praetor, a lover, harlots, slaughters; and the courtesan commands the praetor, the praetor the province. Into the banquet is brought a man in chains, who, when he saw the languid eyes of this praetor, thinking that he himself was being dismissed by the praetor's kindness, gave him thanks and, holding the table with both hands, said: "May the immortal gods return you like thanks." Whoever reclined in the same dining-room — one let his head fall and wept abundantly, another turned his eyes away from that cruelty, another laughed, that he might be the more pleasing to the courtesan.

2.8. Then this man, amid the varied faces of the guests, bids him be removed, and the wretch stand to offer his neck, motionless; meanwhile his death is set off with cups. Not even by the hand of a sober executioner was a Roman citizen killed. I do not forbid that he be struck with the axe; this I ask: that he fall by the law rather than for a harlot. Remember that terror is sought for the empire's sake, not entertainments for little women. Why should I now recount, judges, the kinds of games, the dances, and that contest of disgrace — whether the praetor moved more wantonly, or the courtesan?

2.9. OF CAPITO. Rise now, you Bruti, Horatii, Decii, and the rest of the empire's glories: into how great a disgrace, by good Jupiter, have your fasces, your axes, fallen! With these obscene girls make sport. But if, by the immortal gods, on no solemn day, in the people's sight, you had held a banquet in the forum, would you not have lessened the majesty of our empire? And yet what difference is there whether you drag the banquet into the forum or the forum into the banquet?

2.10. Then he described how differently a man is beheaded in the forum. The praetor ascends the tribunal while the province looks on; the guilty man's hands are bound behind his back; he stands while the faces of all are intent and sad; silence is made by the herald; then the lawful words are employed; on the other side the war-trumpet sounds. Do I seem to you to be describing the jests of a banquet? Alas, how unlike are your ends to your beginnings! A Roman knight accused you, Roman knights judged you, the praetor pronounced you condemned, a courtesan killed you.

2.11. OF BUTEO. That this man might dine more pleasantly with his mistress, a man was killed. "Did you, judges," he says, "ever see before the rostra a praetor dining with a courtesan?" OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. The man who feasts thus, how does he show anger? Those about to condemn swear that they give nothing to favour, nothing to entreaty: I demand that you swear to this law. The majesty of the Roman people, spread through all nations, through all provinces, lies in the lap of courtesans; she commands our praetor who once stood for sale, from whose kiss no man abstained except the one who spared his own lips. Recount your own guests: there were, I suppose, tribunes, there were prefects, there were Roman knights:

2.12. with these, then, the praetor . . . OF CASSIUS SEVERUS. Not even of a slave or a captive is it lawful to take punishment in any place or in any manner or through whomever one pleases or whenever one pleases; and a magistrate is brought in for these things for custody's sake, not for merrymaking's. OF TRIARIUS. On what charge had he been condemned? Murder. Yet he had not killed at a banquet. Take careful heed, courtesan, lest you ask for a second murder.

2.13. MONTANUS VOTIENUS thought these were the questions: whether whatever a proconsul did wrong in his magistracy can be punished by the law of treason. For a defendant who cannot defend himself by the fact takes refuge in the law and says he is not bound by this law. Not whatever a man did wrong in his magistracy injures the majesty. Suppose someone, while he is a magistrate, kills his father, kills his wife by poison: I think he will not plead his case under this law, but under those — of parricide and of poisoning. Do you wish to know that it pertains to the matter not by whom a thing is done, but what is done? A private man can be accused of injured majesty, if he did anything by which he injured the majesty of the Roman people. Suppose a proconsul has a mistress: will he therefore be condemned for treason? What is more, suppose he corrupts a married woman while he is proconsul: he will plead a case of adultery, not of treason.

2.14. "Weigh," he says, "each thing severally that you charge. If he had only had a mistress, would you accuse him at all? If he had executed someone with no one's bidding, could he be accused?" If not every wrongdoing can be punished by this law, then whether what is done under public authority. For when he commits adultery, when poisoning, he sins as a citizen; when he executes, he uses public authority. But in that which is done under the pretext of public majesty, whatever is done wrong must be punished by the action for treason. "For tell me, if, when he ought to execute, not using the lawful dress and solemn manner, he ascends the tribunal by day in banqueting attire; if, when the trumpet ought to sound, he orders music to play — will he not injure the majesty? And yet what he did is fouler":

2.15. and he made a comparison. Then, if what a proconsul did wrong, using public majesty both in right and in equipment, can be punished by the law of treason, whether this can be. "It cannot," he says; "for nothing has been taken from the greatness of the Roman people. He injures the majesty of the Roman people who does something in the public name: as an envoy who brings false instructions — they are received as though the Roman people had given them; a commander struck a treaty — the Roman people seems to have struck it, and is held bound by an unworthy treaty. But now nothing has been taken either from the strength of the Roman people or from its repute; for it is charged to the proconsul if he did anything, not to the Roman people. But from you the rest are judged. No: for both before this man there were others by whom they could be judged, and after him there will be, and no one ascribes the faults of individuals to the cities."

2.16. "And yet the deed itself is base. But so are many other things, and majesty is not therefore injured by them. Almost no one is without fault: one is irascible, one lustful; yet not, if you should wish something in someone changed, is majesty thereby straightway injured." Then he comes to the estimation of the deed itself, and said that these things were charged: that he had a courtesan, that he killed someone in his house, that it was by night, that it was at a banquet,

2.17. that it was at the courtesan's bidding. SILO POMPEIUS added these questions: whether, if he did what was lawful for him to do, he cannot be accused by the law of treason. "He can," he says; "for this law asks what is fitting, others what is lawful. It is lawful to go into a brothel; if a praetor be led into a brothel with the fasces going before him, he will injure majesty, even though he did what is lawful. It is lawful to wear what dress one will; if a praetor administer justice in slave's or woman's dress, he will violate majesty." Then he made that question: whether it was lawful for him to do this. "It was not lawful," he says, "in that place or at that time or for that cause to kill. Some things which are lawful, when the time and place are changed, are not lawful."

2.18. "As to the colour," he says, "the question is which the man who speaks for Flamininus ought to use. There are certain controversiae in which the deed can be defended but cannot be excused; among them is this one too. We cannot bring it about that on this account he is not to be blamed; we do not hope that the judge approve him, but that he dismiss him; and so we ought to plead as for a deed not corrected, yet not criminal." And so MONTANUS used to say that for Flamininus he would not narrate, but would answer the charges. And he said that this sententia of RUFUS VIBIUS was the colour of the pleading:

2.19. that he had good hope for a defendant in whom all lust was confined within a courtesan, all cruelty within the prison. Montanus himself handled most beautifully that commonplace — how many things the Roman people had borne in its commanders: in Gurges extravagance, in Manlius an unbending sternness — whom it did not harm to kill even his son and a victor — in Sulla cruelty, in Lucullus avarice. "In a praetor," he said, "when his self-restraint, his diligence have stood firm, do not sift out how he dined on a single night." "Yet which," he said, "is the more unfair: what they charge — that a condemned man perished for a courtesan — or what they demand — that a proconsul perish for a condemned man?"

2.20. The colour FUSCUS ARELLIUS introduced was this: that he had been drunk and did not know what he did. SILO POMPEIUS used this colour: "He did not think," he said, "it pertained to the matter where or when a man perished who deserved to perish." TRIARIUS introduced a foolish colour: "There was talk," he said, "at the banquet that the praetor's excessive leniency was despised; that there had been other proconsuls who executed daily, but in this man's year no one had been put to death. Someone of the guests said: 'I have never . . .'; the woman too said: 'And I have never.' Angry that his clemency was held in contempt, 'I will see to it,' he said, 'that they know severity is not wanting in me.' A criminal is brought in who ought not to look upon the light any longer. Was someone killed? A condemned man. Where? In the praetorium. At what time? Is there any time at which a guilty man ought not to perish?"

2.21. GALLUS VIBIUS said: "The courtesan begged. I feared, by Hercules, lest she should win the request either that an uncondemned man be killed or that a condemned man live." On the other side many good things were said, many corruptly: in the description of the punishment, those above all who wished to drag all the lawful words of the punishment into sententiae fell into faults; as TRIARIUS said: "'Remove'" — do you hear, lictor? Remove the courtesan from the praetor. This is not bad. He added: "'Scourge,' but see that your rods do not upset our cups; 'strip him.' Courtesan, do you recognize this word? At least the province recognizes it."

2.22. SILO POMPEIUS, a man esteemed for judgement, himself too approached this description, yet did the least harm. He said: "The courtesan executed; 'come, by the law'; for is anything here done by the law?" HISPANUS said: "'Come, by the law' is said to you, Flamininus: live without a courtesan, dine without an executioner." ARGENTARIUS broke up the most violent treatment into the minute figures he was wont to use: "'Come, by the law' — do you know what he says? Come by day, come in the forum. The lictor is stupefied; he says the same as your courtesan: that he has never seen this." MONTANUS VOTIENUS said: "The lictor, about to strike, looked to the praetor, the praetor to the courtesan."

2.23. VIBIUS GALLUS said: "To the lictor, because he had struck well, a toast was drunk." That which is bandied about as Latro's I declare on my testimony is not Latro's, and I clear Latro of a sententia foolishly turbulent; for I myself heard a certain FLORUS, a hearer of Latro's, say it — not at Latro's. For it was not his custom to hear anyone declaiming; he declaimed himself only, and used to say that he was not a master but a model; nor do I know that it fell to any other than, among the Greeks, to Nicetes, and, among the Romans, to Latro, that his pupils did not wish to be heard themselves, but were content to listen. At first, by way of insult, Latro's pupils were called by mockers "hearers"; then the word came into use, and "hearer" was put indifferently for "pupil." This was to sell not one's patience but one's eloquence. To return to Florus: he said in the Flamininus case:

2.24. amid the private cups the edge of the public axe flashed; amid the drunken leavings of drunkards a human head is swept away. Never would Latro have so composed that, because he was about to say "public axe," he should say "private cups," nor would his sententia have evaporated into so soft a composition; nor did he ever conceive figures so incredible as to describe a man struck down in the very dining-room amid couches and jests and tables. He, when in this controversia he had described the atrocity of the punishment, added: "Why have you shuddered, judges? I am speaking of a courtesan's sport." And he said that less-known but no less good sententia: "Against our ally a praetor of the Roman people executed in a private house, by night, at a hasty tribunal, drunk perhaps, not even shod — unless, that the courtesan might watch everything, she carefully required it."

2.25. RUFUS VIBIUS was one who spoke in the old style; that sententia of the homelier stamp came off well with him: "The praetor, to kill a man, called for his slippers." Another of the same kind, but not of the same success: when he had bewailed the condition of injured majesty, and described the custom of the ancestors by which they had always wished men to be summoned to a punishment, he said this sententia: "But now by a praetor justice was administered by lamplight." Yet Pollio Asinius used to say that he accepted this sententia.

2.26. LIVIUS, about orators who hunt after old and mean words and think obscurity of speech to be severity, used to say that MILTIADES the rhetor elegantly remarked: "They go mad after the dictionary." Still, in these men, even if there is less madness, there is less hope; those who swell, those who labour under excess, have more frenzy, but more body too; for it is always easier to come to soundness in what can be cured by subtraction; but no help can be given to the man who is at once mad and feeble.

2.27. But, lest I seem to shield this kind of frenzy, MURREDIUS spoke most bombastically of Flamininus: "Our praetor, gorged in that deadly feast in the courtesan's bosom, the axe roused." And that tetracolon: "The forum was slave to the bedchamber, the praetor to the courtesan, the prison to the banquet, day to night." The last part was said without sense, that the number might be filled out; for what sense has "day was slave to night"? This sententia I have reported for this reason: that both in tricola and in all sententiae of this kind we take care that the number be complete, we do not care whether there is sense. And all kinds even of corrupt sententiae I set down on purpose, because we are more easily taught by example both what to imitate and what to avoid.

2.28. Behold there is this kind of false brilliance too, which seeks the bitterness of words as though it would aggravate the matter; as in this controversia LICINIUS NEPOS said: "The defendant was condemned by the law, he perished for the brothel." And what SENIANUS said has its own kind of insanity: when he said that punishment ought not to be exacted by night, after a long description he concluded: "By night not even the sacrificial victims are slain."

2.29. To this controversia the Greeks too stretched out their hand. NICETES said in it: "When he heard that it was a banquet, he hoped." EUCTEMON said: "All thought that he was being let off." GLAUCIPPUS the Cappadocian, when he had described a luxurious dinner unworthy of a praetor's majesty, added: "Now even the revel-rout!" This same thing ADAEUS said more elegantly, when he had described a nocturnal dinner: "How amorous the revel!" NICETES said: "I have never beheld a man taken off. If the city is fortunate, you will not see it either." ARTEMON in the same place said another sententia: "I have never beheld a man taken off. Woman, there is no need of a revel." GLYCON said: "When it was announced to those in the prison: 'There is a drinking-bout and a summons of a mistress' — someone cried out: 'Wretched me! take me off; for I was unjustly condemned.'"

3.1. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. Is it fair that we should divide children with strangers, whom we do not divide with their mothers? "If you do not take one away, you shall have both." What shall I do? I begot both, I longed for both, for both I made the bargain. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. Together they were born, together exposed, together reared; given back, they are above all torn apart. Fortune once tore them from their parents, never from each other. Take pity, judges; the verdict is grave.

3.2. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. I exposed two because I could not choose one. I am in danger of, having come into court with two children, returning with none; for I cannot choose whom to lose. The cause of my bargain was that I might have sons; its result is that I lose them. For my sons I owe you, not my sons: ask as much as you wish for their schooling, charge what you wish for their food; you may ask more, provided you do not give back less. Our ancestors saw how unbounded was the indulgence of those who feared for their own, how ready to give whatever was demanded; and so, on behalf of the father, our law has bargained with the rearer.

3.3. I could not be bound for those who were not in my power. If we divide on fair terms, let account be taken of both: let me have two as long as you have had them. At an auction the spear, however hostile, does not divide brothers; it is something more to be twins than brothers: each loses his charm unless he is with the other.

3.4. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. My opponent ought to forgive me for keeping my own, when he himself covets another's. He asks back those he has had till now; I keep those I have just recognized. Shall recognition divide those whom even exposure joined? OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. Say which is the more obedient, which the more affectionate. "Both," you say. Do you wonder if I cannot divide twins so alike? Everything for my son I bargain — except my son.

3.5. OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. I shall not even have a defence: if I give up my children so easily, I exposed them gladly. Is this to give children back, or to snatch them away? They had to be lost either way — whether I bargained or refused. I made the bargain weeping, trembling, as when I exposed them. OF CESTIUS PIUS. That I might not divide my sons, I exposed them together. This man too took up two, who is content with only one.

3.6. A second time I am forced to expose. OF JUNIUS GALLIO, the other side. Your part is easy: you can dismiss the father from this trial with both. OF MENTO. This man is used to being without children; I, even if I receive one, must still be tortured: I have grown used to two. Whatever I ever did — and you have at home those you may question about me — I never did anything without them except this disclosure. Do you call that violence which made you a father? Shall I be without an heir, who a little while ago had two sons so fine that of them even one would be enough for anyone? OF POMPEIUS SILO. See how modestly I plead:

3.7. I took them up, I reared them, I gave them back; let him choose. OF VIBIUS RUFUS. "Your children are safe," I said. After this violence of mine, the man kissed me. OF PASSIENUS. Give me the tablets of the will: I have more in the will than in the bargain. This will I do not mean to erase; if I cannot make my own sons heirs, I will make yours. My prayers I will transfer to your sons: this name, I think, I shall be allowed to use while I am at law. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. Do you bear this, excellent young men? I took you up exposed, I reared you, I sat by you when you were sick; you have made me an old man, and you leave me? OF ARGENTARIUS. In that violence I lost two sons.

3.8. The division. Latro divided thus: whether there is violence or necessity in the matter. "There is no violence," he says; "violence comprises arms and chains and the utmost peril, none of which was present in your person." The other says: "There is violence and necessity where, will I, nill I, I must yield. And it was necessary for me; for I could not have one son unless I promised the other." It is answered: first, there is no violence where something must be endured for the sake of getting some object, but a bargain: as, I cannot have a house unless I buy this one; no other is for sale; the vendor saw this opportunity and presses it. Yet you will not rescind this purchase; otherwise the suit will extend to infinity. Another says: "It was necessary for me." Necessary for you? First, you could still have endured the prison; then, you could find another way, hope for another informer. Or could you not find one otherwise? Then I bestowed this the more on you.

3.9. Whether, if there is violence and necessity in the matter, things done by violence and necessity are to be rescinded only if the violence and necessity were applied by the bargainer. "It makes no difference," he says, "whether I or you are compelled, provided I am not compelled by you; the fault must be mine, that the penalty may be mine." "No," he says; "for the law is not angry with the man who applies violence, but succours the man who suffered it, and it seems unfair to it that that should hold good which a man bargained for not because he wished, but because he was compelled. And it makes no difference," I say, "through whom it became necessary for him; for what is rescinded is made unfair by the fortune of the man who suffered, not by the person of the doer." Then whether violence was applied by this man. "You," he says, "applied violence to me, who would not inform unless I made the bargain." "It is not," he says, "to apply violence, to promise something under a fixed condition. If there is any violence, it was applied by you to yourself, in that to expose . . . and that he had come to entreat that he might give back to the father only as much as had been left over for the rearer."

3.10. For the rearer GALLIO followed this colour, that he had been moved by pity. "When I saw," he said, "a childless man without an heir, I said to myself: Why are you greedy? We can both be fathers. And he said that charming sententia: "And so now I pay the penalty for being merciful." MONTANUS VOTIENUS began thus: "If anyone sees me, judges, a moment ago the father of two children, now imperilled by anxiety, I am sure he says, 'A cruel informer.'" And he pleaded with his opponent in a subdued way: he asked him to be content with one; and he took up that objection: "I do not know," he said, "which one," and said: "Believe me, who know them best: choose whichever you will; for this very reason I made the bargain so, because it made no difference."

3.11. HISPO ROMANIUS was by nature one who followed a rougher manner of speaking; and so he pleaded with this colour, so as to inveigh against him as a bad father, and call him one who exposed cruelly, who received back treacherously. "In this," he says, "he asks them back, not because he wishes to have them, but because he wishes to snatch them away; he is angry with me because I reared two, because I informed." And when he had described the savagery of the man who exposed them, he added: "Even now he seems to me of the same mind, the same hardness, because he thinks he owes nothing to the man who reared his children. The father is hard, he is cruel; do not believe so sudden a change after that ferocity. Let me not put to the test, in one son, . . ." CESTIUS had said in this controversia, in that question in which he said he had applied no violence at all: "What then? Who applied violence? You to yourself. There is no reason for another to say: Who applies violence to himself? It happens; behold, I myself have harmed myself." And he had said this: "It pleases me that the things done be recalled to nothing. What do I give that I may not have informed?"

3.12. ARGENTARIUS said, on the other side, that he was now more wretched than when he did not know his own children; and when he had described the torments of a father's heart, he said: "Even now I wish to bargain. What do I give that I may not get back my children? What do I give that I may not have recognized them?" CESTIUS was indignant that he was so often distorted by him and his sententiae changed. "What do you think Argentarius is?" he used to say; "he is Cestius's ape." He used to say it in Greek too: "My monkey." For Argentarius had been Cestius's hearer and was his imitator. He used to say in turn: "What do you think Cestius is but Cestius's ash?" And he used to swear thus: "By the shade of my teacher Cestius," while Cestius was alive. But he followed all Cestius's footsteps:

3.13. equally he spoke extempore, equally he inserted many things insultingly; this one thing, however, he kept with the best good faith — that, though each was a Greek, he never declaimed in Greek, and always admired those who were not content with eloquence in one tongue, but, when they had declaimed in Latin, laid aside the toga, took up the pallium, and, as though they had changed their character, returned and declaimed in Greek; among whom was SABINUS CLODIUS, against whom, declaiming in one day both in Greek and in Latin, many witty things were said.

3.14. HATERIUS said to certain men who complained that he received small fees, since he taught two subjects, that those who taught translation-exercises had never received large fees. Maecenas said: "You could never tell to which side Tydeus' son belonged." CASSIUS SEVERUS said the most charming thing of all, who, when on returning from hearing him he was asked how the man had spoken, answered: "Badly — and worse." GLYCON said: "If you do not give me back both, you will lose what makes them a pair." GALLIO, however, said most elegantly on the father's side, when he handled the last point through the figure of a will: "Whenever I am dead, then let him be my heir: do you wish me to ask which one?" TRIARIUS said, on the rearer's side: "So I could take them up, I could rear them, but I could not keep silent?"

4.1. I should be happier if I were defending more defendants. OF TRIARIUS. These wounds which you see on my face I made after I was dismissed. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. I give thanks to my son, that he did not leave me alone with the tyrant. What his hands dared, I ordered; and so I am present for my own charge. "He was," he says, "the tyrant's friend." Or did my son only feign this in the citadel? I fall at your knees, judges — I, that stubborn man, who, when I was being beaten, did not beg.

4.2. OF MUSA. The tyrant was killed; by whom, do you think, but by the man who could beat his father? Will you cut off the tyrannicide's hands? What is this? The tyrant lies untouched. Fix the tyrannicide's severed hands on the citadel. Shall I not call him my avenger, my son, on whose account I was not even beaten by the tyrant with impunity? After he had seized the citadel, murderers followed him, poisoners followed, there followed whoever could beat his father. It was necessary to beat my father, just as, by Hercules, it was necessary to plunder temples, to rape virgins. I kept saying: "Son, strike harder; the tyrant is watching." If my son was such as you describe, I do not know to whom it would have profited more for the tyrant to live. O how much we owe to those hands, by which now nothing is necessary! He killed the tyrant: so do these angry hands strike. When he was killing the tyrant he said: "A brother strikes you, a father strikes"; so they strike who wish to. With you, my son of inconsiderate devotion, I complain: you struck your father more strongly than the tyrant ordered. In my anger I hurled into my own face the very hands of the corpse as it lay.

4.3. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. They were such that of them one could despise the tyrant, the other kill him. OF JULIUS BASSUS. I drove my son's clenched hands into my own face; I consoled him as he struck. OF PORCIUS LATRO. "Beat your father," he says. While I am careless, my son seized the chance to hurl himself headlong from the citadel. This is not to spare a father, but oneself. Endure, my son; you must go to the tyrant by way of your father. See, they hold the tyrant's bloody head; now cut off those hands. OF BLANDUS.

4.4. When I saw the tyrannicide coming down from the citadel, before anything else I kissed his hands. OF POMPEIUS SILO. Which of my sons do you approve? One killed himself, the other the tyrant. No one has a right over these hands; they are mine; these hands, even when they served the tyrant, obeyed me. So may it be granted me to die with my son surviving, as I called him a parricide who preferred to die. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. I beg you by the public security, by the joy of liberty just now restored, by your wives and children. No one heard me, as suppliant as I beg now, when I was being beaten. How feeble were his hands as he struck! I should not have thought him able to commit tyrannicide. These hands held out to me my saving food, these my drink; yet never did I feel hands more tender than when they struck me.

4.5. OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. "Let him rather perish," he said. Since there was a man who spoke so bravely, scarcely was one found to kill the tyrant. "Son, strike harder," I said, "lest the tyrant perceive we are in collusion." He raised his hands, lightly poised; the son feigned the blows, the father the groans. If there is any faith in me, in anger I carried out my son for burial because he had not struck me. Necessity is a great defence for human weakness: this excuses the men of Saguntum, though they did not strike their fathers but killed them; this excuses the Romans, whom the disaster of Cannae forced to a levy of slaves; whatever it has compelled, it defends. He too would not have spared me, had he been my only son. He left me to a brother: would this one have left me to the tyrant? "Even now," he says, "the wounds appear on your face." Son, it harms you that you killed the tyrant so quickly. OF MENTO. Do you ask who made these wounds? The man over whose death I beat myself. So may it befall me, a free man, both to live and to die, so may my son's hands close my eyes, as I stood among my children the braver.

4.6. The other side. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. He beat his father so long, until he should please the tyrant as a henchman. What? Can you not commit tyrannicide unless you have practised your hands in parricide? "My father is present," he says. So much the worse; for you struck not only a father, but a patron. OF JULIUS BASSUS. Since the age has so changed that a parricide's father is present, we are present for this man's advocacy. He defends a guilty man: do you at all recognize indulgence? His brother, who chose to perish rather than beat his father, is unhappy in that he did not join his cause with his brother's. This man exclaims: "I gave him no orders." I will satisfy you on his behalf too. "That I might strike harder for the state," he says, "I did it." Will you have the grace not to claim the same thing both for the state and for the tyrant? "My father," he says, "is present to me." But, by Hercules, his brother would not be present. You had something to flaunt before the tyrant: my brother chose to die. Whoever was to be beaten was handed over to this man. "The tyrant," he says, "I killed." But your father — how little less than to kill him was it!

4.7. OF POMPEIUS SILO. I rejoice that the father is on this man's benches. For how else could I have brought it about that you should see his wounds? It matters little to me where he is: from this side the charge is made, from that it is shown. A witness who rises from the defendant's side is wont to be the weightier. Such, indeed, was the father, whom no other could beat but one who could be the tyrant's friend. The brother perished, lest he either commit parricide or look on it:

4.8. on that precipice, I say, he fled no less his brother than the tyrant. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. The father came down bloody, his face battered and mangled, scarcely to be recognized; you would think two men had struck him. He did what he ought, who had beaten his father: he killed a friend. OF CESTIUS PIUS. "I," he says, "was beaten; I remit the penalty." I should wonder, were it not that for so good a father there was a man who wished to die. He deserves that you avenge him against his will; or are cruel fathers alone avenged among us? "My father," he says, "ordered it." Then was your brother impious, who did not obey his father? If ever the henchmen obeyed slowly, the tyrant would say: "Did you not watch how he beat his father?" "Let the hands of him who has beaten his father be cut off": this law the dying tyrant praised. At the last the tyrant came between son and father.

4.9. The division. Latro divided into these questions: whether everyone who has beaten his father is not to be punished. "In the law," he says, "nothing is excepted." But many things, though not excepted, are understood; and the letter of the law is narrow, its interpretation broad; some things indeed are so plain that they need no proviso. For what point is there in excepting by law, that it be no harm to a man who in madness struck his father, when he needs not punishment but a cure? What need is there to provide by law that an infant not be punished if he strikes his father? What need that the law provide against punishment if someone roused with violence a father lulled to sleep and collapsed under a sudden heaviness of the body, since that was not an injury but a healing? I am not yet speaking of the particular case, but of the general. If everyone who has struck his father in the way of duty can be acquitted, on this man's behalf I will plead the more spiritedly, that he is worthy of punishment unless he be worthy of a reward.

4.10. If not everyone who has struck his father ought to be punished, whether this man ought. This question he divided into more parts: whether the man is safe who did it at the tyrant's bidding. Consider how many things the tyrant exacted. It makes for public innocence that not even this be permitted to tyrants — to make us guilty. The man who did this at the tyrant's compulsion was more wretched than the very man being beaten. She is not unchaste who is summoned by the tyrant; he is not called sacrilegious who carried the gifts of the immortal gods in his own hands to the tyrant, or who set up among the images of the immortal gods the deadly images of the tyrant.

4.11. Whether the man is safe who did it at his father's bidding. "He did not beat him, but obeyed." And he said this in the narration: "My brother stood with defiant face; I understood he could not be compelled by the tyrant." Whether the man is safe who did it for the fatherland; and whether this man did it for the fatherland — that is: whether already at that time he had a design of tyrannicide, and struck with this mind, that he might make himself a way to the tyrant's friendship. MONTANUS made that last question too: whether, even if some fault was committed, it was redeemed by so great a service.

4.12. GALLIO made that question first: whether the avenging of a beaten father belongs to none but the father. "You will not," he says, "avenge me against my will. If I had been beaten by any stranger and were unwilling to bring an action for injury, no one would bring it in my name. And yet there is no difference: the punishment of the man who struck is greater, the right of the man struck is the same." Against this it is said that an action is given to all; for the injury is not private but public; and so the condemned man does not get off with a money-penalty or the penalty for injury, but loses his hands; that this example pertains to all fathers, to all sons, to the state itself: such are the men who become tyrants, and certainly such are the tyrants' friends.

4.13. And he made these last questions: whether, if he did it with a dutiful mind, he is not liable; whether he did it with a dutiful mind. And to that question of Latro's — "whether the man is safe who did it at his father's wish" — "now," he says, "he invents this for his son's defence, but at the time he did not wish it." And he added: "Do not say that the father wished the same as the tyrant. Do you ask which one he obeyed? The tyrant loved him as though he had obeyed him. 'The father,' he says, 'wished it.' So did you seem worthy of parricide not only to the tyrant, but to your father too?" When he had described him impious toward his brother, impious toward his father, he added:

4.14. "the tyrant too, at the time when you ought to have loved him, you killed." MONTANUS declaimed the accuser's part, and used this colour: that the father had been most indulgent to his children; that his excessive tenderness was known to the tyrant; and so that the tyrant, who sought grief for the chaste from unchastity, for the defiant from slavery, sought torment for a most loving father from his sons' impiety; and he brought in the son who was bidden first to strike his father speaking boldly: "What," he said, "if I do not strike? What will you do? Will you torture me? Kill me? What you command is more than what you threaten." There was a contest in one man, whether nature or the tyrant could do more. "'Strike,' he says: 'I do not strike'; 'scourge': 'I do not strike.'" This with the brother listening. And he said this: "When the tyrant promised friendship, he dreaded the reward of the tyrant's command more than the command." And when he had described the scars of the beaten father and his still disfigured face, he said: "You would think he had been struck by both sons."

4.15. MONTANUS, however, used to say that nothing could be better said than this: on this side the tyrant orders, on that the law forbids: you shall die unless you strike; die rather than strike. CESTIUS said: "The tyrant orders you to beat your father: that is nothing new. You refused to do it: do you think I will praise you? I, for my part, do not praise you; that glory is another's; you should have imitated your brother." ARGENTARIUS said: "You beat your father, when you knew both the law and your brother." MONTANUS said: "Parricide, you violated your father's body, your brother's kindness."

4.16. On the other side all declaimed with this colour, as though he had done it at his father's bidding. TRIARIUS said: "I ran upon my son's hands." BASSUS JULIUS said: "I beat myself with my son's hands." Haterius said: "I give thanks to the tyrant that he ordered my other son to be guarded, so that he could not die." CESTIUS said in the narration: "The tyrant orders him to strike, the instruments of torture are set out; what will he do? 'Let him die,' you say. You say this: rather than strike his father, let him kill him." FUSCUS ARELLIUS said: "I wish to embrace those hands, which deserved well of me even before the tyrannicide." GALLIO said: "Let him see how much the state thinks itself to owe you; I judge that I owe you more than it does: it is harder, what you did at my bidding." MONTANUS VOTIENUS said in the narration: "If you persist, my son, I will follow your brother: see whether you would rather beat your father or kill him."

4.17. This controversia I remember was well declaimed by JULIUS SABINUS too. "Describe," he said, "describe the tyrant killed and yourself led down from the citadel with great glory. O you parricide, unless even after the tyrannicide you understand how much more honourably your brother perished than you killed." That I did not approve — that in a serious matter he attempted many witty things. He was, however, a most urbane man, as I have often told you, so that whatever he lacked in eloquence he made up in wit.

4.18. I remember that, when Syriacus Vallius, an eloquent man, was accusing, and seemed likely to incur the charge of false accusation, Sabinus moved about gloomily among the ring of the judges and kept meeting Syriacus as he went and asking what hope he had; then, after the trial, when Syriacus thanked him for having taken so great care of him: "But, by Hercules," he said, "I was afraid we should have one rhetor too many." And when a witness produced was asked whether he had received . . . sesterces from the father, he said he had received the sesterces; whether he had them, he denied it; then, asked whether he was liable to a charge of false accusation, he said: "You yourselves know my carelessness: whether I have it I do not know; that I received it I know." And against Domitius, a most noble man, when in his consulship he had built baths overlooking the Sacred Way, and had then begun to go round the rhetors and declaim: "I," he said, "knew you would do this, and to your mother, when she complained of your idleness, I had said: 'First swimming, second letters.'"

4.19. Two of his witty sayings I cannot pass over. He had followed the proconsul Occius Flamma into the province of Crete. The Greeks began to demand in the theatre that Sabinus hold the highest magistracy. Now it is the custom for a magistrate of the Cretans to let his beard and hair grow. Sabinus rose and made silence with his hand, then said: "This magistracy I have held twice at Rome." He had twice pleaded a case. The Greeks did not understand, but, praying well for Caesar, asked that Sabinus hold the office a third time too.

4.20. Then afterwards the whole cohort of his companions offended them: they were beset in the temple by the whole multitude, which demanded that Sabinus set out for Rome with Turdus. Turdus was among the most infamous and hated of men. When Turdus promised that he would go, that he might thus be able to get out, Sabinus, when silence was made, said: "I will not go to Caesar with a relish." Afterwards this was cast in Sabinus's teeth when he pleaded his case. Many things I remember he said eloquently, when he was brought from prison into the senate to ask that he might receive a daily ration. Then, complaining of hunger, he said: "I ask nothing burdensome of you, but that you should wish me either to die or to live." And he said this: "Do not, I beg, hear proudly a man in calamity: often the man who could have shown pity asks for pity."

4.21. And when he had said that the wealthy followers of Sejanus were in prison: "I, a man as yet uncondemned, beg bread of parricides, that I may live." When he had moved men both by a tearful and an eloquent speech, he nevertheless returned to his jests: he asked to be transferred to the quarries (lautumiae); "there is no reason," he said, "why the very name 'lautumiae' should deceive any of you; for that is a thing not at all elegant (lauta)." This I have reported, that you might both know the man in some part and learn how hard it is to escape one's own nature. How could it be obtained of him not to jest in declamations, when he jests amid his own miseries and perils, in which that he ought not to have jested who does not know, that he could who would believe?

4.22. MURREDIUS did not fall below himself in this controversia; for he introduced a most foolish colour: "He too," he said, "wished to follow his brother's example: while I hold him back, while I struggle, he seemed to have struck his father." Of those I heard declaim, I know that MENTO used the father not as advocate but as supporting witness; he brought in the tyrannicide himself speaking, and used this colour: not that he had been bidden by his father — for he said it seemed incredible to all that a father should have bidden himself to be beaten before the tyrant — but that he had entered upon a design of tyrannicide, so that through this he might come to friendship, through friendship to tyrannicide. This sententia of his was praised, when he described himself laying hands on his father: "Nothing in the whole tyrannicide did I do more difficult." And he said this: "The tyrannicide would have been accomplished then and there, had not my brother deserted me." And he said this: "You I then looked to — the temples, the laws, the state; for if I had looked to myself alone, I should easily have escaped the tyranny by that road by which my brother escaped."

5.1. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. A violent and ungovernable old man, I snatched a free man from my own bosom. What is hard for you to keep, give to his grandfather. How often, most wretched boy, will you hear from your stepmother: "Who are you, runaway? Have you been brought back?" I had a daughter — although this man has but one son — a fruitful one. How tenderly she divided her offspring! A son was born; she said: "This son is mine"; another was born; she said: "This is his father's"; a third was born; she said: "This is his grandfather's." When this man sought his son, there were those who advised and said: "Be silent; he deserved to be shut out." OF CESTIUS PIUS. What cause for seizing him had I, ungovernable old man? Had I killed his brothers? Forgive me if I tell only my daughter's dying charges: her alone of my own did I see die. I had a daughter: of all my own I must say "I had." The boy wandered in mournful and dingy bordered robe; all pitied him, and some I even heard saying: "What?

5.2. Has that boy no mother? No father? No grandfather?" OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the elder. You owe three of my daughter's sons; one is mine: let him be nursed with me. What do you fear? That you will not be admitted when you come? It has pleased me to expound thus far; now fortune, or the stepmother, must be told. When the boy saw me, he clung to my embraces; I, wretched, kept kissing him, kept asking about his brothers; while I ask, while I weep, I had reached home. I beg that this may not make my case the worse — that the one I seized was an only son.

5.3. OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. You send out a herald; add to him all the marks: "This boy lost his mother, lost his brothers, has a stepmother"; I assure you, no one will give information who has any goodwill. You err, and grievously err: the sons you lost you do not seek; you seek the one you did not lose. Which, after all, is the juster complaint? The father asks the grandfather for one; the grandfather asks the father for two. OF VIBIUS RUFUS. That ravisher and ungovernable man — while my grandsons were dying I stood at his door: I have more to fear as a grandfather than as a defendant.

5.4. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. One perishes, another perishes: so often you accuse fortune, never the stepmother. An outrage! A boy is sought, for punishment, on the father's information. I came to my sick grandson; I was not admitted: this was the true violence. OF ARGENTARIUS. "What accomplices had the boy?" I do not know; I was not at home. Having lost my daughter, I wished to adopt one of my grandsons, but I said: "What need is there? Whenever I wish to see them, I will come home; whenever I wish, I will take one home; let us act as kinsmen: you have three sons, let us divide them"; and see how not unreasonable is the division I want:

5.5. of three I ask for one. Would that he sought all those he lost! OF BLANDUS. When I wished to hand over the boy, someone or other cried out: "Boy, now you are lost." I will keep nothing from you; why should I? to the herald too I revealed everything. OF MENTO. I seized my grandson, I have him;

5.6. I would give him back, if the father were seeking him. THE DIVISION. MONTANUS VOTIENUS divided into these questions: whether there is violence in the matter. "There is no violence," he says: "what arms, what fight, what wounds has it? I want the escort of this 'tumult' described to me: what crowd is one boy and one old man? You seized," he says, "my son": nay, he took up his own grandson; nay, he could not shut him out when he came. Whether, if the violence is said to have been done for the sake of the man to whom it is said to have been done, the doer is not liable. Injurious violence is condemned; for violence is wont to be also salutary. If, when robbers were besieging someone, I had broken through his villa and with an armed band carried off his wife and children, could my kindness be accused? Physicians too bind, and apply violence to our bodies that they may heal them. Whether it was for the boy's good to be seized. Here the accusation of the stepmother and the attack on the father, who so patiently loses his own.

5.7. GALLIO made that question too, and thought a question should first be taken from the person rather than from the matter: whether action can be brought against a grandfather in a grandson's name. "No more," he says, "than against a father in a son's name, no more than against a mother. Nature has her own rights, and this difference between grandfather and father — that a grandfather may keep his own, a father may even kill them. You cannot," he says, "deal with me as with a stranger, so as to say: 'What have you to do with him? Who are you?' He of whom, dying intestate, your son will be heir, whom you will, when mad, put in chains. Certain rights are given us not by law but by nature. A grandfather will strike his grandson when he does some wrong and frolics too wantonly among boyish games, and no one will bring an action for injury against him.

5.8. And GALLIO made that last question, when he had handled those — "it is lawful for me to use force that I may do good"; then, "this was for his good" — whether the grandfather should be pardoned, since out of feeling for his grandson he was carried away to do it. Here he handled how unworthy it was that the man be condemned for this. LATRO put the two last questions differently and embraced more: whether, even if he used violence, he nevertheless cannot be condemned, if he did it with good intent; whether he did it with good intent. For he said the controversy with the grandfather was also about his intent, and that the father said: he did it not to save his grandson, but to defame my wife as a poisoner, and me as a man handed over to a poisoner, to whom his own children would be ill entrusted.

5.9. So Latro used this same colour for the father, to say that not even while his wife was alive had he been on good terms with his father-in-law, but that, after her death, the man had carried on open enmities against him: that, when the boy was ill, he had come with abuse, with shouting, both speaking and ill-boding nefarious things; that friends had advised him not to admit a man who came not for his grandsons' service but for the injury and insult of his son-in-law — a man who had never deigned to approach his grandsons when they were well; and that the physicians had urged him not to come and confuse the boy and fill him with suspicions.

5.10. SILO POMPEIUS' colour was, as it seemed to Latro, one that worked against the controversia; for he said that the grandfather had come to the feeble boy; that to the sick men are not always admitted, especially to those who are gravely ill; that often even a father has not been admitted; that so to the grandfather too, coming unseasonably, it was said: "Now you cannot"; that he had at once gone off with abuse; and had done the same in the other case. Latro used to say that this colour was the best, if the matter stood thus, but that it could not be accepted, because it is laid down: "he was not admitted";

5.11. that under this theme we understand that it was said to him not "Now you cannot," but "You cannot at all." GALLIO mixed both, and used, more openly, this colour, which otherwise may seem to overturn the theme. "It was said to him," he says, "'The boy is resting, wait a little; the physicians have forbidden anyone to be admitted.' You know they are wont to say: 'Not even if the father comes.' At once this man began to shout: 'I call to witness that I am not admitted,' and all but to give notice with sealed tablets. I had put off the grandfather, I shut out the accuser. Again," he says, "he came with abuse: 'Already you have killed one, you are killing the other.' Nothing is more wretched than when, out of someone's misery, ill-will is sought for him." He was not admitted when he said he did not wish to see his grandson, but to inspect him. Thus he pleaded: "I came, not to accuse this man, but to defend myself." GALLIO used this colour: "I did not admit the grandfather, because I had been told that he came in this mind — to seize the boy."

5.12. On the other side CESTIUS introduced this colour: that he had feared for the boy. "And not without cause," he says: "the stepmother had killed two." And he said: "I could wish I came to you a more guilty defendant; I could wish I had been able to seize all three." ARGENTARIUS used this colour: that the grandfather was begged by the boy. "He said," he said, "that he could not live if he were left in that house." HISPANUS used this colour: that he had been carried away by feeling. "I took up," he says, "my grandson; I could not be sated with kissing him, I could not be torn from him so quickly. Do not wonder: after a long time I had seen him."

5.13. ALBUCIUS used this colour, saying that he had not wished the boy to be reared in so ill-omened a house, from which two brothers of his had already been carried out; that for the one who afterwards died, among the causes of his death was his brother's fate. And he kept this colour, that he should say nothing against the stepmother, nothing against the father; he used to say that the grandfather would be most just, if he had wished only to defend himself. "What then? Why did you seize him? I loved him; to him above all, from the first, I had bound my heart. In your house I feared nothing but the house itself. If two had died in my care, I should have moved him out of my house." MONTANUS VOTIENUS said

5.14. that MARCELLUS MARCIUS told it thus: "The boy followed me. I do not accuse him to you; whatever it is, let it be at my peril rather than his: I seized him. 'Where is he?' he says. He is alive, he is safe; come and look at him when you will. 'Give him back,' he says, 'to his . . .' I cruel! Come, I will show you, if you wish, who took your sons from you before me." VARIUS GEMINUS said the same thought: "What devotion is this, either so late or so preposterous?

5.15. You begin to seek your own with the third." MONTANUS VOTIENUS, a man of most rare though not most faultless talent, his own fault which he does not avoid in speeches he could not avoid in declamations either; but in speeches, because the material is more spacious, the repetition of the same things is less noted; in declamations, if the things said are the same, since they are few, they are marked. I remember him, on behalf of Galla Numisia before the Hundred Men, making his maiden plea. Galla was heir to a twelfth part of her father's estate. She was charged with poisoning. He said a thing most eloquent and likely to endure for all ages, than which I do not know whether anything better has been said in this kind of cause: "A twelfth is owed neither to a daughter nor to a poisoner." He was not content; he added: "In a father's will, a daughter's place is either her own or none." And now he added:

5.16. "You leave too much to the guilty, too little to the innocent." Not even thus could he sate himself; he added: "A daughter cannot cling so narrowly to a father's tablets, which she ought either wholly to possess or wholly to lose"; and many more besides which I do not recall from memory; some of these he carried into his speech, and added more than he had spoken. Nothing of these but is fine, if it stand alone; nothing of them, again, but stands in another's way. The same thing I remember he did in this declamation. "You err," he said, "father, and grievously err: those you lost you do not seek; the one you seek you did not lose." Then: "This boy, if he is found, perishes." Then: "Whoever favours the boy, let him pray he be not found." Then: "The boy, unless he follows his grandfather, will follow his brothers; cease to seek the one whom, if you find him, you will so lose that you cannot find him." And then: "The grandfather seized him, lest the stepmother seize him." And then: "The father seeks one only of his children — the one who is safe."

5.17. GLYCON said this thought once, and in an uncorrupt manner: "This little boy, when he is found, then he will perish." Montanus has this fault: by repeating his sententiae he corrupts them; while he is not content to say one thing once and well, he brings it about that he has not said it well. And on this account and for other things in which an orator may seem like a poet, SCAURUS used to call Montanus the Ovid among orators; for Ovid too does not know how to leave what has come off well. Not to recount many things that Scaurus called "Montaniana," I will be content with this one: when Polyxena had been led off to be sacrificed at Achilles' tomb, Hecuba says: the very ashes of the buried man war against this race. He could have been content with this; he added: in the tomb too we felt an enemy. Nor content with this, he added: I was fruitful for the son of Aeacus. Now Scaurus used to say a true thing: it is no less great a virtue to know how to speak than to know how to stop.

6.1. OF CESTIUS PIUS. There is no reason for you to think these tears either a daughter's or a defendant's: she weeps for her brother. It would not profit you, girl, even this — that your brother loved you — unless your mother had hated you. In this you killed me, stepmother, that you knew to choose an accomplice for the punishment. He said: "Let us sift out her past life." OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. Nefarious woman — a stepmother to her own daughter too — she could not even die without killing. Among gladiators too the victor's condition is worst when he fights with a dying man. No adversary should you fear more than one who cannot live, but can kill.

6.2. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. Most furious is the rage in death, and in the last despair the mind is driven to frenzy. Some beasts bite the very weapons, and through their own wounds rush at the author of their death. The gladiator, his discharge cut off, naked pursues the man whom, when armed, he had fled. Men flung headlong drag down not only what pushed them but what they meet, and by a kind of natural feeling of a desperate mind it is most welcome to the dying to die in company.

6.3. OF VOTIENUS MONTANUS. While I avenge my son, I showed where she could most grievously harm me. A lie like the poisoning itself! Do you think it credible, parricide in a sister? I do not fear lest anyone believe this of a sister, which I scarcely proved against a stepmother. I took up a daughter, born to me as though to be a pledge of peace; I said: while she remembers her mother she will forget her stepmother. But she, while she remembers her stepmother, has forgotten her mother. "My daughter," she says, "is my accomplice." After this word you would think the torments relaxed: she became like the torturer. A sister gave her brother poison? How long we struggled to make it believed that the stepmother had given it to her stepson! Stepmother, you have attained what you wished: I now repent having condemned you. OF ARGENTARIUS.

6.4. I do a thing not new, judges: I avenge my children against a stepmother; I beg that, because I avenged my son, I may not lose my daughter. Unless you succour me, the stepmother has won, I am beaten. I do not know whether I married a worse wife or stepmother. This girl is the dearer to me, that she was so hateful to her mother. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. If she were an accomplice, I should await no one: you know how I hate a poisoner. I pressed on with the torments, I said: "Die worse than you killed"; the fires did not seem to me to burn enough, the lashes not to cut enough; I said: "If I can add anything to your torments, I think I will order my daughter brought; let someone call her hither to her mother." Why are you frightened, girl? Why have you fled back to my bosom? Why have you taken fright as at a stepmother?

6.5. OF MARULLUS. Not even amid her punishment did she cease to kill: and shall anyone think this woman could not have given poison without an accomplice? The girl who is said to have killed her brother — what did she ever do wrong before? The stepmother too killed her stepson before her daughter. And she is of good hope; do you ask for proof? She does not please her mother. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS. Even toward your ashes the stepmother is hostile; the one thing she can, she persecutes — your sister. What can the girl yet know but her brother? Let it profit her before you that her father praises her, and let it profit her that such a mother accuses her.

6.6. OF MENTO. Do you not pity this girl? She is more wretched than her brother: he, no doubt, had a stepmother. "My daughter," she says, "is my accomplice." I began to be tortured, the stepmother to torture. You have attained, woman, what you wished: alone of all I felt my stepmother more when I lost her. OF PORCIUS LATRO. I had a son so good that even a stepmother could love him, had she not fallen in with one who could hate even her daughter. To such depths have the ages fallen, that there is a girlish parricide? So, if she does not understand the magnitude of the thing, is she fit for parricide? "But she is a poisoner's daughter," she says. If parents are looked to, why should she not rather seem like the father whom she pleases than the mother whom she displeases? Finally, I do not refuse that in her case even the mother's imitation be required: at this girl's age the mother was neither a stepmother nor a poisoner.

6.7. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. I married a wife as yet stained by no scandals, and I do not wonder that she was then innocent: she was still a girl. OF BLANDUS. Grant that she is wicked; surely she is like her own mother; before parricide she ought to commit poisoning. "My daughter," she says, "is my accomplice." The gods destroy you! Even while you are tortured, you kill. A slave under torture named Cato as accomplice in a theft. What are you doing? Do you believe the torments more, or Cato? OF BUTEO. If an accomplice is to be sought from you, girl, name your father. Why the stepmother so late, the girl so soon? "My daughter," she says, "is my accomplice."

6.8. May you perish ill! And I thought you were one woman's stepmother only. OF TRIARIUS. "Your daughter," she says, "is your accomplice." After this word she seemed to herself to have conquered. She wept for her lost brother at his funeral; she wrung the tears of the whole people from her own; and so the stepmother wished her to perish worse than her stepson. "My daughter," she says, "is my accomplice." This was the stepmother's last poisoning. OF Q. HATERIUS. Succour her, I beg, lest, when she has been tortured because she killed my son, she also, while being tortured, kill my daughter. I always carry out my children for burial by the lie or the poison of one and the same woman. She does not weep as much as is enough for a defendant. How shall I wring tears from her? Bring me my brother's likeness: see the tears stirred by sudden longing: did she have such a face when her mother was being tortured?

6.9. The other side. OF TRIARIUS. If we hated you, we should allow you to live with such a daughter. The cubs of certain beasts are born with rabies; poisons are deadly from the very root. How much did it add to her crimes that a stepmother bore her? What of the girl who scattered her brother to delay her pursuing father? You have an example that suits both a sister and a virgin.

6.10. The division. Cestius divided the conjecture into two parts, and first asked whether she needed an accomplice; then, if she needs or needed one, whether she had this one. But he did not keep measure; for he both handled at length that commonplace — that a sister cannot be driven to her brother's death — and meanwhile wished her to seem so much a girl as to be fit for no service. And so most elegantly did MONTANUS Votienus deride in this controversia the follies of the rhetors, that they declaimed as though this girl who is named were an infant, and did not understand that, were she such, she would not even be a defendant. "And so this," he said, "we ought to set before ourselves: a girl of an age at which a crime is perhaps credible." That, indeed, he used to say was intolerable which CESTIUS had introduced: the mother saying to the daughter, "Give your brother poison," the daughter answering, "Mother, what is poison?"

6.11. TRIARIUS made it much more foolish, because he did not invent it but corrupted it; for he drew it from Cestius's sententia: he had brought in the stepmother saying, "Give your brother poison"; he made her answer, "Mother, give some to me too." For what is so absurd as that a mother should so speak with a girl, "Give your brother poison"? Nor did he tolerate that sententia of Triarius which Haterius used differently, when he had come to the epilogue: "At this point the defendant ought to weep; does the girl weep? I will find how she may weep; let someone bring hither my brother's likeness." For she, if she is so much a girl as to say, "Mother, what is poison?" cannot be of such piety that the likeness of her brother should stir her to tears. So great, indeed, is the error in all pursuits, but most in eloquence, whose rule is uncertain, that some both understand their own faults and love them.

6.12. CESTIUS understood that he had said childishly, "Mother, what is poison?"; for he used to deride MURREDIUS, who, imitating this sententia in his epilogue, when he had begun to address the girl and said: "Compose yourself into the bearing of those in peril, pour out tears, let your hands fall to your knees, you are a defendant," had made the girl answer, "Father, what is a defendant?" And Cestius used to say: "If, to deride me, a charming man said this, then I too now know that I speak a foolish sententia; but I say many things not because they please me, but because they will please my hearers."

6.13. And that of RUFUS VIBIUS he used to say was more tolerable, but itself too worthy of some reproach: he had said in the epilogue, "Nurse, take away the defendant." That in Haterius, who both promised an orator and proved one, he denied he could bear, which he had said: "This defendant must not be sent into exile, but carried"; "when he knew," he said, "that men condemned to deportation into exile are wont to be put up for contract." For what does he wish to be understood by this sententia? That the girl is wholly unable to walk, or unable to walk all the way to exile?

6.14. it is true, but neither could her mother. SILO, on the father's side, made a comparison between the mother and the daughter, and declaimed the whole through this figure: "I will not," he said, "tell you what sort a poisoner ought to be. I shall waste effort if I begin to describe that she ought to be advanced in age, practised by use, hated by her husband, one who could kill even her daughter. It is superfluous to use many words; in this very case we have a model of a poisoner. Let us compare the two defendants with each other; nor is there reason for you to seek someone to lead your inquiry through all the parts of the comparison; I will tell you how I accused her. I charged her with her past life: can you charge this girl with hers?"

6.15. And so he went round everything and defended by comparing. That little question which had been handled in the first part by some — whether she needed an accomplice at all — he ran through thus: "The defendant kept saying through the whole pleading: 'Say what accomplice I had'; I denied that she needed one; I said: 'You were in the same house, the poison was known to the stepmother, the opportunity easy for one living together, you were not suspected, no one feared you on account of your sister.'" On the other side he used this colour: that the stepmother had given the stepson poison so that her own daughter might be sole heir; that the same girl had been both accomplice in the poisoning and its cause.

6.16. He said all the declaimers had wished to say something new in that place where the stepmother named her daughter as accomplice. "HYBREAS said," he says: "'What then? Did she lie against her own daughter? No: but against mine.'" This sententia FUSCUS ARELLIUS, being one of the Asians, did not say by chance, but transferred it word for word: "What then?" he said. "Did she lie about her own daughter? Nay, about mine." More modestly did HATERIUS turn this sententia: "What then? Did she lie? Why should she not lie about her accuser's daughter?"

6.17. CESTIUS said: "She named her stepson's sister." ALBUCIUS said: "What had she, that she should doubt whether to spare the daughter of the man by whom she was being killed, the sister of the man whom she had killed?" TRIARIUS said: "What then? Did the mother lie? Take away the name 'mother': after her condemnation she is a stepmother." BLANDUS said: "I will name the girl who stood by her father, who wept for her dead brother, did not weep when her mother was tortured." SILO POMPEIUS said: "'My daughter,' she says, 'is my accomplice.' After this I noted in her the same face I had seen when her stepson was dying."

6.18. MONTANUS VOTIENUS said that MARCELLUS MARCIUS, his friend, of whom he often makes mention in his writings as of an eloquent man, had said this sententia: "She found how, though condemned, to accuse, dying to kill, tortured to torture. This is no information, but a second poisoning by the stepmother." Latro had said, when he had described the torments: "I stood over her head not as accuser but as torturer; I myself put on the fires, I myself laid hands on to stretch the rack. Shall I not drink that woman's blood, not tear out her eyes? She snatched away my son; had I not crushed her the more swiftly, she would have carried off my daughter too." TRIARIUS said: "When I accused, I charged poisoning; in the last part, amid my prayers, I roused the girl to avenge her brother. This above all moved the judges, this above all offended the stepmother." ALBUCIUS said: "After she named my daughter she looked back at me — to know, no doubt, whether she had tortured me enough." NICETES said admirably in this same place: "'My daughter,' she says, 'is privy with me,' and added, 'in this.'"

6.19. MONTANUS, when he was treating that commonplace — that even wicked parents wish their children to be innocent — said: "That woman can pretend her daughter a poisoner, if she can make her one; it is harder to befoul one's children than to destroy them." And this: "Favour the age, judges; since it bears great crimes, let it not bear premature ones too; favour it, that no crime be committed but the usual one; favour it, that rather a stepmother not cease to commit parricide than a sister begin. I was able to condemn her, I was not able to escape her. You did it too late, stepmother: if you had said this before, you could have bargained for collusion; not rightly, when you were being condemned, were you so spirited; rightly you can do nothing. If there is any faith in me, an accuser, I feared snares for the defendant; nowhere did I let the girl from my bosom, I myself tasted all her food beforehand. O mortality, heedless of the future! After I had brought the stepmother to the torturer, I ceased to fear for my daughter.

6.20. All used this colour — that the daughter was named by the stepmother to grieve the father. GALLIO said more: "Perhaps," he said, "she named her to conceal the true accomplices; perhaps, because the accuser pressed most fiercely, terrified by this fear she sought to put an end to the torments; perhaps, too, stupefied by the excessive pain of the torture, she did not know what she was saying." Last he said: "Perhaps for this — that she who was paying the penalty of poisoning might exact the penalty of the accusation." He added that thought: "I judge it from my own feelings: at the time when I raged with anger, with hatred, I looked round all the paths of vengeance, forgetting innocence; if the stepmother had had children of her own, I should have killed them. Against this very girl how often I wished to make an onset! But for this she was safe from me — that she was not safe from her mother."