Book 10

pr.1. Question me on whatever you wish, and then let me return from these youthful pursuits to my old age. I will confess to you: by now the thing has become a weariness. At first I leapt to it gladly, as though I were bringing back to myself the best part of my life; then I began to be ashamed, as though I were spending a long while on no serious matter. This is the nature of the schoolmen's studies: lightly touched they delight, but handled and brought closer they breed disgust. Let me then drain my memory once and for all, and dismiss me — even if it must be by compelling me with an oath, by which I should swear that I have told what I knew and what I heard and what I judged to bear upon this matter.

pr.2. But I do not think it bears upon the matter how L. Magius, the son-in-law of T. Livius, declaimed — though for a time he had his own following, since men praised him not in his own honour but carried him along for his father-in-law's sake; nor how L. Asprenas or the elder Quintilianus declaimed: I pass over those whose fame was extinguished along with themselves. About SCAURUS, if you ask me — when you have heard him along with me — you are unfair. I have known no one whose talent the Roman people forgave more stubbornly. He used to speak carelessly: often he learned his case on the very benches, often while he was putting on his cloak; then, looking more like a man quarrelling than pleading, he wished to call forth some utterance from his opponents and to come to a wrangle: he knew his own powers. Nothing was more charming than he, nothing more ready: his manner of speaking was of the old style, the weightiness too of words not common, his very face and bearing of body marvellously fitted to oratorical authority.

pr.3. But from all this one may know, not how great an orator the idle Scaurus showed himself, but how much he threw away. Most of his pleadings were bad, yet in all of them some trace of a great and neglected talent stood out. Rarely was any pleading good — and even that one you would set down to luck. To such a pass had a long, nay perpetual, sloth brought him, that he wished to take pains over nothing, and could take pains over nothing. He published seven speeches, which were afterwards burned by a decree of the senate. The fire had done well by him; but there survive little books that war with his reputation — far looser, indeed, than the pleadings themselves; for when care abandoned those, heat assisted; these have less of heat, no less of carelessness. We heard him declaim, and most lately indeed under M.' Lepidus, in such a way that — which was the hardest thing of all — he was displeased with himself.

pr.4. You ask about T. Labienus? He declaimed not indeed before a crowd, but excellently. He did not admit the crowd, both because this custom had not yet been brought in, and because he thought it base and a mark of frivolous self-display. For he affected the censor's frown, though his spirit was of another kind: a great orator, who, having struggled out of many hindrances, had reached the fame of his talent because men confessed it rather than because they wished it. His poverty was utter, his ill-repute utter, the hatred of him utter. But that eloquence must be great which pleases men against their will; and since the favour of men reveals talents and the favour of men feeds them, how great must be the force that bursts out among obstacles? There was no one who, while he flung every reproach at the man, did not grant much to his talent.

pr.5. The colour of his oratory was of the old age, the vigour of the new, the polish midway between our age and the former, so that either party could claim him as its own. His freedom of speech was so great that it passed beyond the name of freedom, and, because he mangled ranks and men on every side, was called Rabies, "Frenzy." His spirit, among his vices, was huge, and, in the likeness of his talent, violent — one that had not yet laid aside its Pompeian breath amid so much peace. In his case a new penalty was first devised: for it was brought about by his enemies that all his books should be burned — a new and unwonted thing, that punishment should be exacted of studies.

pr.6. By heaven, this cruelty, turned to the punishment of talents for the public good, was invented after Cicero's day: for what would have come to pass, if it had pleased the triumvirs to proscribe Cicero's talent too? The immortal gods are slow indeed but sure avengers of the human race, and they turn great examples back upon the heads of those who invent them; and by a most just exchange of suffering, what each man has devised for another's punishment he often expiates by his own. What madness so great drives you on, men most demented? Plainly there is not enough cr+uelty of the known kind for punishments: you hunt up new ones against your own selves, by which you may perish; and if Nature has withdrawn anything from all suffering of the body — as the talent and the memory of a name — you find out how to bring these too back to the same

pr.7. bodily evils. To set a torch to studies, and to take vengeance upon the monuments of learning — how great and how unsatisfied a savagery, when other material does not content it! The gods grant us better — that these punishments of talents began in the age in which talents had ceased! As for him who had pronounced this sentence against the writings of Labienus, later, while he was still living, his own writings were burned — by an example now not evil, because his own. Labienus did not bear this insult, nor did he wish to survive his own talent, but ordered himself to be carried into the monuments of his ancestors and there shut in — fearing, no doubt, lest the fire which had been applied to his name should be denied to his body: he did not merely make an end of himself, but even buried himself.

pr.8. I remember that once, when he was reciting a history, he rolled up a great part of the book and said: "These things which I pass over will be read after my death." How great was the freedom in those pages, which even Labienus dreaded? A neat saying of CASSIUS SEVERUS, a man most hateful to Labienus, was reported at that time when the books of Labienus were being burned by decree of the senate: "Now," he said, "I must be burned alive, who have learned them by heart." I will show you a pretty little book, which you may seek from your friend Gallio. He recited the reply written to Labienus on behalf of Bathyllus the freedman of Maecenas, in which you may look up to the spirit of the young man, provoking those teeth to bite.

pr.9. But now, I think, you no longer used to hear anything — though my Mela knit his brow. He had much talent, no judgment: everything carried to the last degree of swelling, so that it lay not outside health but outside nature. For who could endure a man saying, about fountains, "they rain back from the sky," and, about the sprinklings, "perfumed showers," and, about the dressing of greenery, "embossed woods," and, about a painting, "rising groves"? Or that thing which I remember him saying about sudden deaths, when you had brought me there: "Whatever of birds flies, whatever of fishes swims, whatever of wild beasts runs about, is buried in our bellies. Ask now why we die suddenly: we live by deaths."

pr.10. Ought we not then, even though he had already been set free, to have satisfaction made to us out of his hide? Nor am I one of the strictest judges who would direct everything to the exact rule: I think much should be forgiven to talents; but vices are to be forgiven, not monstrosities. Yet if any things were said tolerably, I shall not withhold them, though they may not seem many: do you add the rest. OSCUS said not unhandsomely, but did himself harm; for, while he wished to say nothing except in a figure, his speech was not figured but distorted. And so not without wit did the rhetorician PACATUS, when he met him at Massilia one morning, salute him with a figure: "I might," he said, "have said, 'Hail, Oscan.'" He himself was far from eloquence, born to brand reproaches upon the talents of all. There was no one on whom he did not stamp something that could not be escaped.

pr.11. On that Passienus he imposed an obscene name, the first syllable changed into Greek — a declaimer subtle but dry; to that Sparsus, who kept a common school with a certain rhetorician, he said: "Can you understand a controversia, you who do not understand that you are washing a brick?" SPARSUS, however, used to speak violently, but harshly. He had set himself to the imitation of Latro, yet was never like him except when he said the same things.

pr.12. He used his own words, but Latro's epigrams. He had a contest with BASSUS, whom you too have heard, an eloquent man, from whom you would wish to take away the bitterness he pursued and the pretence of oratorical pleading. There is nothing more unbecoming than when a schoolman imitates the forum which he does not know. And so I loved CAPITO, whose declamation on Popillius is wrongly put under the name of poor Latro: he was a schoolman in good faith, and in those declamations which turned out well for him he is to be preferred to anyone after the first tetrad.

pr.13. You ask what I make the first tetrad? Latro, Fuscus, Albucius, Gallio. As often as these clashed, the glory lay with Latro, the palm with Gallio; the rest arrange as you please: I have given you the power over them all. Let these, the less famous, withdraw into their place — Paternus and Moderatus, Fabius, and any of neither bright name nor obscure. Since I have offered myself to you to your full content, allow me also to bring forth from my bosom some whom you do not know, to whom not talent but opportunity was lacking, that they might reach fame.

pr.14. GAVIUS SILO declaimed well, to whom Caesar Augustus, when he had often heard him pleading causes in the colony of Tarraco, gave full testimony; for he said: "Never have I heard a more eloquent head of a household." But while he set above all the head of a household, he was withdrawing the orator: he thought it part of eloquence to hide eloquence. CLODIUS TURRINUS too used to declaim with zeal, whose son is joined to you in brotherly love, a young man destined for the highest eloquence, if only he did not prefer to exercise what he has rather than to attain what he is able to.

pr.15. But Turrinus the father had taken much from his powers, while he followed the Apollodoreans and thought their school the supreme law of speaking; yet so much of his powers survived as would have been strong even if art had been wanting. He spoke epigrams that were excited, insidious, aiming at something. He never failed to make a controversia for Latro about the colour. Latro was never wont to dispute at a banquet or at any other time than when he could declaim. He used to say that some colours were at first sight hard, rough: that these could not be approved except in delivery. And so he denied that he could please anyone except as a whole; that he knew his own powers, and, in confidence of them, dared things fearful to others and abrupt; that he did not persuade the judge of many things, but carried them off.

pr.16. TURRINUS, on the contrary, approved nothing unless it was safe — not because he was feeble, but because he was circumspect. No one set out his cases more carefully, no one answered more readily; and so he owed to eloquence both his money and the dignity which he held, the first man in the province of Spain. He had been born, indeed, of a most splendid father, his grandfather being a guest-friend of the deified Julius; but in the civil war he raised again the weakened strength of his noble house, and so brought it to the highest dignity that, if anything was lacking to him, you may know it was opportunity. From him too his son — that is, my son, for I have never distinguished him from yours — has in his speaking his father's diligence, by which he deliberately blunts the powers of his own talent. This he follows in his very manner of life too — a young man who would rise to the summit, were he not content with a modest place; and therefore he is worthy that fortune should keep faith with desires so modest. That I have set down their names from no excessive favour but from sure judgment, you will know when I have reported their epigrams, either equal to those of the best-known authors or to be preferred.

1.1. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. I thank the rich man, because he is content to make those whom he hates defendants. By day we are forbidden public ground; ask what is done by night. "You shall not walk," he says, "by the same road as I; you shall not tread in my footsteps; you shall not present a squalid garment to my delicate eyes; you shall not weep against my will; you shall not be silent." We were lost, if he were a magistrate. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. That I went in mourning is grief; that I wept is filial duty; that I did not accuse is fear; that he was repulsed is your doing. Shall I not keep silent, who still live because I kept silent? You know the suspicions of a talkative people. Why did that man, while my father lived, never seek office? But I beg all men to help me in the inquiry into my father's death; and I should have come to your knees, rich man, did I not fear lest you should say that ill-will was being stirred up against you; and long since I follow you with this mind: I watch by talking for an occasion; nor, by heaven, can I say that it is your inhumanity that makes me not dare, but my own fault pursues me: I am silent. Would that my father too had had this fault! While he speaks freely, he offends many: for I do not think he had you alone for an enemy in the state.

1.2. As that man says, I have approved my case to the people. OF JULIUS BASSUS. But when have we not been in mourning before these rich men? "Accuse," he says. Shall I, a poor man, accuse a rich one; I, a mourner, a candidate? I am not allowed to walk by my own choice. He has summoned me to court: "Carry me through as defendant," he says, "plead it out." Who would dare to accuse a man saying these things? "Why," he says, "do you follow me?" — as though the poor had one road, the rich another. OF CESTIUS PIUS. I should not be a defendant, if I could accuse. With beard let down, in mourning, with my charges I have come to you. Let everything be done — I will not cease to seek out the slayer, and perhaps I have already found him. When suddenly my father, in the midst of the city —

1.3. why do you gaze at me? Why do you watch what I shall say? — was carried off. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS. To go about with a great train, in splendid dress, is not of my fortune; that the rich can do; it is enough if we live. Since my father's body was found unspoiled, who was the slayer I do not know: whoever he was, like a rich man he despised the spoils. "Why," he says, "do you follow me through the public street?" An unworthy crime has been committed: rich man and poor have walked by the same road. OF OSCUS. "Accuse," he says. Where is he who had begun it first? I could wish my father too had not parted from you: he would be alive. "Why," he says, "do you not make me a defendant?" Because, my father being dead, you do not fear me as an accuser — for I fear lest anyone think a wrong is done him, if I say "slain."

My father was slain —

1.4. by whom? If you permit me, I do not know. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. "You are in mourning," he says; "you weep." What else can I do, the son of a poor man slain? My father was slain in the midst of the city, the laws being safe. Who could tell this without tears? I will not lay aside this squalor, until I have found one on whom to put it. Who slew my father? I do not know. You can bear witness to nothing more than this my own voice: as yet I do not know. Meanwhile I deliberate, and shall put on that garment which the slayer left to my father. "Why do you follow me?" Magistrates do not clear away those behind their backs.

1.5. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. What would that man do to one accusing, who persecutes one silent? "Why do you not bring suit?" Because you are so far from being afraid that you would force suit to be brought against you. Do I now do you any wrong by being in mourning? Is what is allowed to a defendant not allowed to a mourner? What less could I render to my father? In his honour I changed my garment. OF ARGENTARIUS. Do you not wish me to weep for my father? You did not used to provoke us unprovoked. OF CLODIUS TURRINUS the father. "Why," he says, "have you taken up squalor?" What then? Shall I not even mourn him whom I cannot avenge? I do wrong to no one but my father, whom as yet I weep in silence. OF PORCIUS LATRO.

1.6. Amid the grief of a father so cruelly slain, what is braver than that he groans? "Accuse me," he says. Whence are you so free of care? You seem to have found out who else did the slaying. There was no booty in him for a footpad to pursue, but there was the highest virtue, but there was a most firm bulwark of poverty, an innocence defiant against the disdain of riches: these were the spoils sought from an enemy. Somehow it gladdens a man to be wretched amid wretchedness, and for the most part all grief flows out through tears. He exults too much at our funeral: while that man lived, he was not wont to provoke us into becoming defendants. If anyone, amid the tears for a slain father, has marvelled at the inertia hitherto so trusted of one most wretched of all mortals, let him lay all his wonder upon this indignity of the present peril. Do you marvel that a poor man has not taken up the spirit of accusing a rich one? Because he is silent, he is made a defendant.

1.7. By these tears, by this squalor, by these instruments necessary to all in peril, we ask no invidious reward of your pity — only that, being acquitted, it be allowed me to live as though a defendant. That man is powerful and in favour, and — what not even he himself denies — was rich, and one who thought he need never fear anything, even as a defendant. Then day by day the hatred grew, through the violence of the one, the freedom of the other. The rich man held us, the poor, to be nothing but poor; we held him to be nothing but innocent, amid daily battle-lines ever unconquered. Who in the meantime planned our death I do not know: what cannot be dissembled I do know — who wished it. That man came with a crowd of clients and parasites, and poured out his whole household against poverty. "Why do you not accuse me, do not summon me?" Scarcely did he refrain from saying: "What would I, an accuser, not dare against you, who had him put to death who had only gone to law with me?"

1.8. Cities for the most part, neighbouring ones, swell with war amid a sudden quarrel; amid civil strifes there is enough for vengeance in whatever each man has seized for railing. With what violence Macerio storms against the absent Metellus! M. Cato heard charges of theft flung at him by Pulcher. What greater indignity could there be of that age than either Pulcher an accuser or Cato a defendant? Against Cn. Pompeius, conqueror by land and sea, there was one to compose a lampoon — one scratching his head, as is said, with a single finger. There was one who, by the license of song, despised three gilded chariots. There was one to mangle the empty boasting of the most sacred M. Brutus . . . saying that his hands were not only unstained but steeped in the blood of fellow-citizens; yet he, though he was tearing at three consulships and three triumphs, was so far from fearing to become a defendant that he even took pains to be eloquent. This man alone, in our state, is more innocent than Cato, more noble than Metellus, braver than Pompeius —

1.9. Latro divided thus: whether there is a wrong in the matter. "There is no wrong," he says: I am in mourning; how many do this! All kinds of wrong are comprised by the law: to strike is not allowed, to revile against good morals is not allowed. In this place SCAURUS said: a new formula of wrongs is being framed — "in that one man reviled another against good morals." Even if there is a wrong in the matter, whether, if he does it with no evil intent, he is safe; or whether he does it with evil intent. This Latro divided into two questions: whether, if he believed his father was slain by this man, and for that reason followed him, he should be forgiven; then, whether he did believe it. GALLIO made this the first question: whether, if a man does what each is allowed to do, he is not liable for wrongs. "It is allowed," he says, "to weep, allowed to walk where you will, allowed to take up what garment you will. But nothing," he says, "is allowed to be done to throw ill-will upon another. You are in mourning — I do not complain; but if your squalor stirs up ill-will against me, I complain."

1.10. About the colour there was inquiry: some openly inveighed against the rich man, some said nothing at all against him, some followed a middle road. Since beyond these there is nothing, Latro wished to seem to have found a fourth kind, so as to speak against the rich man in this fashion: "You indeed did it not, yet I had reasons for which I might be deceived and suspect something of you in vain: because you were an enemy, because my father was found unspoiled," and the rest. But this is that middle kind, neither of dismissing the rich man nor of accusing him: for he ought neither to dismiss the man whom he has put off, nor to accuse him for this very reason, that he has put him off.

1.11. ALBUCIUS said nothing against the rich man; he declaimed in this colour: "He commits a wrong," he says, "who accuses one whom he has not summoned." "Why," he says, "do you follow me?" That you may at last pity me, that you may cease to persecute an afflicted house, that you may know I cannot accuse in this garb, that you may conceive a desire for the glory of an avenged death. You alone can, if you will, find out who slew him; you can accuse. "But some hold me suspect for this." You can scatter that suspicion: ask who did it. "That you may know," he says, "that you are throwing ill-will upon me: when I had said, 'Accuse me,' you did not deny that you would accuse, but answered, 'I will accuse when I am able.'" Forgive me — I can no more accuse anyone as yet than acquit him: I am asking who did it. These are slight arguments, they are empty, which touch others: that you are an enemy, that he was found unspoiled — there is no reason why I should accuse, there is reason why I should suspect.

1.12. RUFUS VIBIUS put this for colour: "I am in mourning, I grieve; I follow you that I may be the safer; I fear that unknown man, whoever he is, who slew my father; I know that, as long as I am with you, I cannot perish." While MURREDIUS followed this colour, he said most ineptly: "Why do I follow you? My father, because he walked alone, was slain." The colour of OSCUS did not please Gallio: "I follow," he says, "that I may find who did it; this I reason with myself: whoever it is that did it will wish to charge it upon this man as his enemy; he will come to the rich man." "Much more wrongful," he says, "is this, if he does it for the sake of inquiry, if he follows the rich man not only for reviling but for peril." GALLIO thought one should plead subtly, and direct the colour of one's pleading to the position of the controversia, so as to say: "I suspect my father was slain by you. For who else hated him more? Who else is so powerful? The garment, no doubt, some other unknown slayer had coveted. Someone will say: What then? If he is an enemy, is he straightway the slayer? No; therefore I do not accuse."

1.13. HISPO ROMANIUS accused openly, and said that he lacked not a case but power; and this epigram he said in the proem, with great applause of men: "I have that man for accuser who marvels that he is not a defendant." JULIUS BASSUS in this controversia said: "Why do you follow me through the public street?" An unworthy crime, judges, has been done: poor man and rich have trodden the same ground. He was wont, however, to pursue squalid matters, and found those who admired them above all else. I remember him declaiming the controversia about the pander who summoned ten young men to come to the brothel, and covered with thrown-up earth a pit filled with fire, into which, when the young men had slipped and been consumed, he was accused of harming the state. ALBUCIUS heard him declaiming — a fastidious hearer of those whom he could envy; he admired this epigram of BASSUS: "By heaven, I could not endure you, had you tied a dog at the door."

1.14. The same man used to say that those epigrams of Latro were swollen rather than strong, which were carried about with the highest admiration of men: "the fathers read the proofs and divide the bones of their children by guess"; and that one: ". . . brought forth your priestesses"; and that one: "Over the ashes of our children the brothel must be leveled to the ground." But he himself praised these things, at least those which he had taught. For in this very controversia, lest Bassus should seem to have said something more squalid, he himself said: "Shall ten young men so perish for your two-pence?"

1.15. EUCTEMON, on the son's side, when he had told that his father, alone and without a companion, had been set upon and slain, said: "For this reason it is safest to walk with the rich." And the same: "Why am I silent? My father died while speaking." HERMAGORAS said: "Let us found a city of our own, you poor; for the rich men . . . their own." This in the narration: "By whom he was slain, I do not know. He had enemies by nature . . . able to accuse." ARTEMON said: "When I find the slayer, then in turn will I prosecute; and then indeed, if I find a poor man."

2.1. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. I am in doubt what to wish concerning the outcome of this trial, since my crime is to have conquered. You see how in this trial too he boasts of his own works: and does anyone marvel that, born of such a father, I am too eager for glory? Your part is easy: join the brave men. We disagree because we are too much alike. When we went out into the line of battle, he used to say: "If I were a young man, no one would fight more bravely." He told too the virtues of his ancestors, but set himself before them all. "When I have come to your age, I will not contend with anyone — though, if I choose to follow your example, I will contend even with my son."

2.2. Because I have the judgment of my country, I have lost that of my father. Shall I say to him who disowns me, "I will not be wanton, I will not love"? This amendment of my crimes I cannot promise: but I will fight, and bravely, and most bravely. I saw my father, already old, putting on the breastplate: it is much to fight against such an example. Does he call it a trial in which father and son together brought in the spoils? Behold, I, a fellow-soldier, can yield to a young man, to an old man I cannot. That I contended is the law's doing, that I conquered the judges', that I fought my father's. I wished to yield: the young men rushed together; the cause of age was being pleaded; I conquered — not a son a father, but a young man an old one. I conquered, but all congratulated my father.

2.3. As a young man I obeyed great examples. I was deceived, while I thought to myself of Horatius warding off the Etruscan ranks with his body, and of Mucius burning his hand on the enemy's altar; and while I thought of you, Decius, who yourself too were unwilling to yield to your father. I will pass over into your benches, I will embrace you against your will: though you fight back, I am the stronger. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS.

2.4. It was necessary for me to fight bravely: I had to fight not only for my general but for my father. If you had conquered, it would be said: "He yielded to his father; for he feared to be disowned." You always used to wish that it might fall to you to have a son better than yourself. Do you call a trial the double triumph of our house?

2.5. OF CLODIUS TURRINUS. Would you say to Mucius, "There is no need for you to show that hand"? You to Scipio after the destruction of Carthage, "Be silent"? Virtue is talkative, and not only shows itself but thrusts itself forward. Behold, some now say: "The father yielded to the son, and in this he disowns him — that the contest may seem to have been real." Wish, father, to be conquered by your grandson too. "Afterward," he says, "you will be able to fight bravely." How do I know? With wounds I have made myself old. Who is happier than you? You conquered all, your son conquered you. How much more honourably did father and son contend with each other just now — destined to make the more honourable whichever conquered. I am in doubt what to do. Shall I be silent?

2.6. But silence seems a confession. Shall I tell my virtues? But this too befalls me as something new — that to me alone, disowned, it does not profit to tell them. I went out into the line in my father's presence: "Fight bravely," he said; "it is base for a young man to be conquered by an old one." I am greedy of glory: if this is a vice, it is my father's. I am brave: do you blame it, father? But you will disown me now, if I say: "I am most brave." Yet I will say it boldly:

2.7. I am most brave, nor do I fear this charge in a state in which we have known even old men to be brave. OF JULIUS BASSUS. To you too part of my disgrace overflows: be ashamed, father, if you are conquered by disowning a son. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father. Forgive me, young man as I was, I erred: I will not be ambitious, when I am old. OF GAVIUS SILO.

Which do you think conquered? I have only the reward, you have both the reward and a brave son.

2.8. THE DIVISION. Latro divided thus: whether the son can be disowned for this — that he did what the law allowed. "No one," he says, "in the same matter both has the law and fears it." On the other side he says: if he does anything which is not allowed, the law will avenge it; if anything which is allowed but not fitting, the father will. The question is not of the son's crime, but of his duty. Then: let each use his own law; that was allowed you, and this is allowed me. Let it be permitted to disown one's children. Is there any law that prefers the son to the father? If he can be disowned even for what he did with the law's permission, whether he can be disowned also for this — that he received the prize. "He cannot," he says, "be privately punished in that matter in which he is publicly honoured. To the same thing cannot both a prize be given and a mark of disgrace announced. Suppose the other rights to be subject to paternal authority: this right is greater than the rest, in which there is question of victory, of the highest virtue. You cannot disown your son under this law, by which you were conquered by your son."

2.9. If he can be disowned, whether he ought to be. This he divided thus: whether, even if he ought not to have contended with his father, he should nonetheless be forgiven, if as a young man he slipped through eagerness for glory; then, whether he ought to have contended. "For you," he says, "the contest was both honourable and safe: for what is more glorious than either to conquer a brave man or to be conquered by one's son? If he ought not to have contended, he would not have conquered. And it could have come about that, had he yielded to you here, some other man would have come forward to the contest who now did not come forward, because he knew it would profit him nothing if he conquered you, since he must be conquered by your son. There would have been no praise of yours: for it would have appeared that that victory was not of a brave man, but of a father. In silence your virtues would have passed away:

2.10. now they are made illustrious, while they are compared." TURRINUS in this place said neatly: "More men began to envy you, after you were conquered." And so a thing of a new kind happened: the son had conquered; all said, "O happy father!" He made the last question: whether, even if he sinned in some way by the judgment, he amended it by the prize. In this place GALLIO said that epigram which was much applauded: when he had long pleaded for pardon, he said: "If I cast away nothing, what do you think I will do? Go to the temples to supplicate the gods? I will flee for refuge to your statues."

2.11. SILO POMPEIUS attempted in this controversia too that question which he thought should be attempted in all disownings of brave men: whether a brave man can be disowned; he said that in no controversia could it be handled better. "You cannot," he says, "disown one who can conquer you. Do you marvel that under this law a man is taken from a father, who is both matched with him and preferred to him?"

2.12. As colour for the young man GALLIO brought in this: "The young men," he says, "stood round me; the cause of age seemed to be pleaded. While I hesitated, I heard someone, I know not who, saying: 'You do nothing; I yield to you, to him I do not yield.'" CESTIUS used this colour: that he had thought it more honourable for the father himself, and certainly for the house, that the praises of both should be seen in the forum. MONTANUS VOTIENUS said:

"I considered not what you commanded, but what you had taught; for you had always said, when you urged me to glory, that I should yield to no one." Your fortune seemed enviable to all in that trial, when it was asked whether you had fought more happily or begotten. There is no reason for you to think that I seemed braver to them: they were deceived, father; they judged not what was, but what they believed you would rather.

2.13. ARGENTARIUS said: I sought the chance of a kindness, I did not covet to receive the prize. The honour came to both: one has the prize, the other received it. FUSCUS ARELLIUS the father said: had you bidden me sail, I would have driven the bark through wintry waves; had you bidden me travel abroad, nothing would have been hard at your command. This thing you bade me, hard for a brave man: to be conquered. BLANDUS narrated with this colour: "My father objects to me that I did not yield to him in one matter; I will multiply my crimes: never, as often as a thing was rightly to be done, did I yield to him; always I wished to seem more frugal, I wished to seem more laborious; for when it came to a matter of strength, even he himself used to yield:

2.14. it was not I who conquered him, but his age." TURRINUS used this colour: "I wished," he says, "to yield, but there were those who said it was not allowed; that thus a most wholesome law was being abolished. They seemed about to argue against the father's prize and to say: it is not allowed to brave men to yield to each other; the matter is not pleaded for their sake only, but the public's; it concerns all to know who is bravest. By these utterances of men I was sent to that contest, in which either victory would belong to him. What do you think I will say? That I seemed braver? It is false, since this too — that I was brave — was his. What then? You ask why I conquered? It seemed to concern the blush of all our youth that no one fought more bravely than an old man." And when he had said that he had conferred the prizes upon his father, he said:

2.15. "I conquered you, father, but surely I conquered for you." ALBUCIUS narrated with this colour: "I did not wish," he says, "the title of bravest man to seem to have fallen to my father by collusion: I did not yield before the trial, that in the trial I might yield, and I did nothing else than praise my father, recount his virtues;

2.16. and for this very thing I seemed worthy of the prize." SILO GAVIUS said: "You used, father, to tell me examples of distinguished men, some even of our own house; you used to say: 'You had a brave man for grandfather; see that you be braver.' I went out with you into the line, nor there . . . When we returned, all the glory was in one house. The state wished to recognize its brave men. O what eagerness for glory I saw in my father, and how youthful! He forbade me to contend by his command, he bade me by his example. It came to the trial: the most enviable of all the things I have known was asked about my father — whether he were braver or happier."

2.17. OSCUS narrated with this colour: "There were those who came up and said: 'Ask your father to yield to you; it is not useful to the state that the enemy's spirits be roused; they will be roused, if they learn that no one in this city is braver than an old man.' They forced me, as though even then I should render some service to the state, to come to trial: in which what do I have? I am judged the younger." MENTO said: "I fear lest for this very thing I become cheaper to my father; we know how proud of glory he is."

2.18. TRIARIUS used this colour: "In the trial I wished to yield to you, that you might seem not to have commanded but to have conquered, and I yielded: I pleaded my case perfunctorily; but let it be known that he yields because it is too little for him not to think . . ." NICETES in this controversia said: "If the grandfather, restored to us by nature, stood by that tribunal of old, would he not have said:

'What day is this for me, ye gods I love? Indeed I greatly rejoice that son and son's son strive together about virtue'; and: 'far better is he than his father.'"

SCAURUS said this thought in another way:

2.19. "O if my grandfather were present at the trial, how gladly would he watch even our discord! He would have cried out to me: 'There is no reason for you to yield; he never yielded to me himself.'" LABIENUS declaimed the father's part and said: "What is allowed even to worse men — I do not wish to dwell with my adversary: the same lodging does not hold a brave man and a conquered one. 'I have set up a statue to you,' he says: nay, that I might never be able to forget that I was conquered, you have cut my disgrace in bronze."

3.1. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Not even as victor did he wish satisfaction made to himself: he excused the conquered, nay he restored them. Since you demand back the life you gave, take it. There was no woman's head in the proscription. OF OSCUS. You have defiled your household gods with your daughter's blood. And yet why do I say "household gods," as though she perished in the house? When Pompey's head was brought to him, Caesar wept: this he granted him for the sake of his daughter. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS. "How do you wish me to make you satisfaction?" By this very thing he should have made it. He had a daughter dutiful both toward her husband and toward her father: the one she followed even to death, to the other she made satisfaction even through death. How dangerously do I offend him, who, when once he has begun to be angry, knows not how to forgive?

3.2. OF CLODIUS TURRINUS the father. "Die." What else had she deserved, if she would not make satisfaction? Had you not forestalled her, sister, perhaps the father would have made satisfaction to himself. This, I am certain, each of you urged upon the girl: "You come to an angry father; compose yourself into what blandishments you can; ask, beseech; if you accomplish nothing, you have the means of forcing him: declare that you will die." This which you have forgiven, victor, pertains to the men: they thank you; for the women you would not have proscribed even had you been angry. "Why did she follow her husband?" Have the old examples of good wives so slipped from you, to which, when sane, you used to urge your daughter? One redeemed her husband's breath with her own, one cast herself upon the burning pyre. The girl would have spent herself for her husband, had she not been keeping herself for her father.

3.3. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. The daughter rolls before the paternal threshold in her own blood. Why have you shuddered? It is a father's satisfaction. You know the law of our house: I must either conquer or die. What kind of satisfaction is this, by which the daughter does not perceive that the father has been won over for her? OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. Which were the better side, the gods alone seemed able to judge. "If you wish to make satisfaction to me, die." So far as concerns me, I had rather you were angry. If it were parricide to have been on opposite sides, Cicero would never have defended Ligarius before Caesar. M. Tullius, how light a crime did you judge that of which you confessed! Give the daughter — if you are merciful, to her prayer; if an enemy, to the edict; if a father, to nature; if a judge, to her cause; if you are angry, to your brother.

3.4. OF BUTEO. Before the very threshold of the house she died, that it might not be doubted whether she had perished for her husband or her father. Where did you see that? Where hear it? I deny that you learned that in war. OF MARULLUS. "She had deserved," he says, "to die." Do you still accuse? Surely satisfaction has now been made you. O new monster! With the victor angry one must live, with the father appeased one must die. OF PASSIENUS. Would that I had intervened: you would not have made satisfaction to your father alone. I should call you mad, had you not asked on your son-in-law's behalf. The son-in-law followed the opposite side, the wife her own.

3.5. OF LABIENUS. By this compliance let him obtain at least this — to die within the house. M. Cato, than whom the civil storm carried off no more splendid man, could have lived by Caesar's kindness, if he had been willing to owe it to anyone. The best defense of a civil war is forgetfulness. OF MUSA. When Cn. Pompey's head was brought to him, Caesar is said to have turned away his eyes — which you did not do even at your daughter's death. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. That cruel fortune of war ranged through every rank, descended even to the punishment of the lowest plebs: nothing in our state was immune from the victor's anger except women: this praise the wretched city was permitted to keep. Either our father is mad, or the victor is.

3.6. OF MENTO. Once repulsed she returns; again repulsed she asks a third time; she is not wearied, she knows that even enemies are won over. O cruel man, unless satisfaction has already been made you even for your son-in-law! I am not ignorant in how great peril I stand: an angry man knows not how to be appeased, and he grew hot even at his daughter's voice. OF TRIARIUS. Would the victor not be won over, when a father asked for his daughter? "Die." Even those who must punish the condemned do not say "kill," do not say "die," but "proceed by law": they withdraw the cruelty of command under a milder word.

3.7. THE DIVISION. Latro used in this controversia that well-worn question: whether a charge of madness can be brought against a father for any other thing than madness itself. "I am unrestrained, I am cruel, harsh — yet not mad. You owe it to your father to approve your own character, not to rule his. Say: 'You are foolish, you understand nothing'; I, if I can, will gather proofs of my sanity; I will say: 'In the senate I did not speak my opinion foolishly. What do I seem to you to have done madly? Did I plead the side ill?' You must gather many signs of madness; you cannot condemn a father for words, nay, for a single word."

3.8. If any father, even one not mad, can be condemned of madness for some blameworthy deed, whether this man can. This he divided into two: whether, even if he said it with this mind — that he wished his daughter to die — he should yet not be condemned. Here the accusation of the daughter follows the side opposed to the father, though nature itself had exempted her from public ills. Manlius punished his son, and a victor; Brutus punished his children, not made enemies but about to be: see whether under these examples it is allowed a father merely to speak more boldly.

3.9. Then: whether he did not say it with this mind — that he wished her to die. "I said it," he says, "in anger, when I wished to chastise, not to kill." CLODIUS TURRINUS said neatly: "Do not marvel if I use harsher words; I am not going to go beyond words; I will threaten, then forgive: the victor did so too."

3.10. GALLIO made this question too: whether the girl did not perish for this — that the father answered her so harshly. "She perished," he says, "from longing for her husband; otherwise would she have paid for the bitterness of one word with death? Nay, headlong, rash, burning with insane love and stunned, the man whom she had followed, leaving her father, having seen her father, she followed."

3.11. SILO POMPEIUS set before this question that one, from which the passage was made to this: whether, even if she perished for this word of the father's, the father ought nonetheless not to be condemned: for not the outcome of any matter ought to be charged, but the intention. If after this word the girl had lived, could you condemn the father of madness? And after this word, if anything was done, it was done not by the father but by the girl. But her rashness ought not to seem the father's madness. After this question he made that one:

3.12. whether she perished for this. The colour on the accuser's side is simple: he says the father was hard, cruel; that to the public good this man was not the leader of his party. "He said it," he says, "with such a look, such firmness, that he seemed not only to bid but to kill." In this place TURRINUS CLODIUS said: "This after war — nay, after the edict?" And he added: "Now the state understands, general, how much it owes to you, to whom satisfaction was made without blood." All said that the husband married her against the father's will.

3.13. GALLIO said: "It did not yet seem to me that she knew what she had deserved. I wished her to understand her crime." CESTIUS with this colour: "She asked," he says, "defiantly, in the very manner in which she perished — not with downcast face, not with humbler words, not yet as one conquered: I recognized nothing of a daughter, nothing of one conquered. First, why does she send to me, not to her brother? Is she still angry with her brother?"

3.14. ARGENTARIUS said: "We won over the leader, we whose children had been on opposite sides; we said: 'Forgive; do not be stern, when you are allowed to be free from care.' What sin did I commit, that I did not at the first word receive my daughter as she came from the enemy's camp?" CLODIUS TURRINUS said: "I wished to give the brother a kindness toward his sister: 'I will speak the harder, that he may beseech me for his sister.' First, why does she ask me alone, when she ought to make satisfaction to two?" SILO GAVIUS said: "I wished her to be tortured with delay: 'Let her,' I said, 'ask a second and a third time: not even the gentlest victor forgave at once.'"

3.15. LABIENUS said: "I was not won over at once; and had she lived I should not have been broken by her next prayers, nor even when asked a third time or a fourth. 'But the victor was quickly won over.' Do not marvel: it is easier to forgive war than parricide." HISPANUS said about her death: "A second time the husband has taken her from us." ALBUCIUS said: "I thought," he says, "I could safely speak the more boldly; for I did not doubt the brother would say to her: 'There is no reason for you to fear, he will be won over; if he is the harder, I will ask him myself'; and had you asked, young man, I should have done it. I refuse you nothing, no more than your sister refuses her husband."

3.16. MONTANUS VOTIENUS said: "There is no reason for you to think she fell to her father's anger: for him for whom she had lived she perished, she spent herself for him to whom she had bound herself." And the same thought in his arguments, when he said that even by her death she sought ill-will against her father, that she did not perish for the father's sake: "What then," you say, "for whose sake?" You know she had one for whom she could die.

4.1. OF PORCIUS LATRO. Estimate how great is that man's crime, in which the injured fathers are silent so as not even to acknowledge or take back their children, even when the wrongs are confessed. His cruelty was a tax — all the more so because all of us, except him, are merciful. You would be a beggar, had you not made so many beggars. That wretch brought it about that, by a new fashion, nothing was more wretched for the exposed than to be taken up, for the parents than to acknowledge them. OF CASSIUS SEVERUS.

4.2. Here the blind, leaning on staffs, wander; here they carry round maimed arms; this one's foot-joints are wrenched and his ankles twisted, this one's legs are crushed, this one — with feet and legs unharmed — a woman has battered the thigh: savaging each in a different way, that bone-breaker cuts off one's arms, unstrings another, twists another, weakens the loins of another, beats another's diminished shoulder-blades into a deformed hump, and hunts laughter out of cruelty. Bring out, come now, your half-living household — trembling, crippled, blind, maimed, famished; show us your captives. By heaven, I wish to know that den of yours, that workshop of human calamities, that spoliarium of infants. To each is assigned his own calamity as though it were a trade: "This one has straight limbs, and if no one hinders it, his natural tallness will shoot up: let him be broken so that he cannot lift himself from the ground, but, the joints of his feet and legs loosened, may crawl; let this one's be torn out by the roots. This one has a comely face: a beggar can be handsome; let his other limbs be made useless, that the injustice of fortune, raging against its own gifts, may strike men's minds the more." Thus, without his guard, the tyrant dispenses human calamities.

4.3. OF VIBIUS GALLUS. Behold the feeble limbs of the wretched, consumed by I know not what wasting; this one's hands cut off, this one's eyes torn out, this one's feet broken. Why do you shudder? Thus does that man show pity. So many limbs are broken to fill one belly, and — O new monster — the whole man is fed, the cripples feed him. OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. "They would have perished," he says. Do they not survive more wretchedly than they were going to perish? "They would have perished," he says. Ask the fathers which they would have preferred. "Let his eyes be torn out," he says, "this one's hands cut off." What if some one of these is to be a brave man? Is to be a tyrannicide? What if a priest? Nor, I think, do I speak things incredible in this fortune; certainly from such a crowd the origin of the Roman race appeared. An excellent rearer reckons more put to cruelty's account than expended on pity. OF TRIARIUS. "They would have perished," he says.

4.4. I think you have tested that we are not cruel; yet there was not one of us who, as he held out a coin to these, did not pray for death. Rise, you cripple: he tries and falls down. Rise, you mute one: but why are you roused? You cannot ask. Rise, you blind one: but to whose knees you should go, you do not know. O you, most happy of all the cripples before this trial — because you did not see that master; in this trial most wretched — because you do not see that defendant! The exposed have been nursed even by wild beasts, which would have been gentle enough had they passed them by.

4.5. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. So then, if in those times that executioner had appeared, would Rome not have her founder? I fear lest this profit the defendant — that no one of these wishes any to seem his own. OF JULIUS BASSUS. Look upon both sides, and succor the side that is more pitiable. Let it be permitted to see your hirelings: this one is blind, this one crippled, this one mute. To these you do not permit to die? Do you wish the judges to be merciful upon you after your own manner, by your own example? OF ARGENTARIUS. Whose prayers, though they are heard everywhere, in their own cause alone fail. "Let us add something to the takings:

4.6. take out this one's eyes, that one's hands." OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father. "Let the tongue," he says, "be cut out: it is a kind of asking, to be unable to ask." Pity all these, judges, of whom you are wont to pity even single ones. OF CESTIUS PIUS. To undertake this case I was not even asked by those for whom I plead. For what do the wretched know how to ask except a coin? What sin has that wretch committed, other than that he was born? OF CLODIUS TURRINUS the father. Come, if anyone acknowledges his own, will you ask for maintenance as though you had reared him? There is no reason for you to fear, no one will acknowledge them. O wretched man, if anyone gives maintenance to his own! O wretched man, if he refuses! Do you so think we will refuse vengeance to these, to whom we do not refuse even that which they will give to you? And — what is most unworthy — though he is so cruel, he lives by the public pity.

4.7. Come, wretches, and today for the first time ask on your own behalf. OF MENTO. The wretched wander about the houses of their own parents, and perhaps someone does not obtain maintenance from his father. None bring back more than whole slaves. "Why do you bring back so little? . . . could you not, that you might not ask, that you might not receive? I should not have left you breath, had I not been about to be crueler in leaving it. Your daily catch does not answer my hopes; it appears you do not yet seem wretched enough to men." OF GAVIUS SILO. "You," he says, "shall beg in that neighborhood, you shall approach that threshold"; and the cruel man points out to the wretched the houses of their parents. "This one does not easily obtain a coin: let something more even now be taken from him."

4.8. OF JUNIUS GALLIO. "Keep his eyes that he may see whom to ask; keep his hands that he may have wherewith to receive the coin." Dire omens meet weddings, gloomy auspices public rites; on holidays especially, and solemn days dedicated to mirth, these half-living herds wander abroad. From a father, perhaps, someone carries the coin he received to the gods. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. I know, judges, that each man is wont to be driven to accusing by various causes: some have been provoked by ambition for the glory they sought from a condemned man, others have been drawn on by hatreds and feuds; I do not doubt there have been some who sought a reward. I am free of all the causes that impel others: for what glory is there in so squalid a defendant? What feuds, when one would be ashamed even to have contracted them? Or what reward, since those feed him who cannot feed themselves?

4.9. He is not one who knows not how to ask; he even teaches it. Which of your feelings I ought to wish for, I do not know: if you are nearer to mercy, I will show you the crimes of the defendant; if to severity, the defendant himself. This man we feed at public cost. The talion cannot be exacted from you: you do not have as many limbs as you owe. The she-wolf, forgetting her ferocity at the exposed infants, calm, is said to have offered them her teats as though to her own young. Thus the she-wolf came to the infants; let us await the man. I congratulate you, Rome, that a man did not fall upon your founders.

4.10. So then, when you were thinking of the public mercy, could you be so cruel? "On the next day," he says, "this one brought in the most: another must be made like him; this one brought in enough: let another also be made wretched after this example. Go now," he says, "and seek maintenance for me. You," he says, "who have no eyes, ask by your eyes; you," he says, "who have lost your hands, ask by your hands; you, by those crippled limbs which you drag; let each go round begging by what he does not have." O wretched they who ask thus, more wretched they who are thus asked! Behold someone: "My son," he says, "if he were alive, would perhaps be like this one. Do I pass over my own?" Another: "Mine," he says, "could have fallen upon the same master. What if he has fallen upon him?" All heap up alms upon all, while each fears to refuse his own.

The other side. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS. "You crippled them," he says. The fathers had harmed them more.

LATRO divided thus: whether the state has been harmed.

4.11. "First," he says, "the crime ought to be established, then this man sought out as the defendant. Whether the state has been harmed is not usually proved by arguments; the damages of the state are at once manifest, if the walls are thrown down, if the fleet is burned, if the army lost, if the revenues diminished: this damage which you object — who saw it? Tell me: when did he harm the state? When he crippled one exposed child? And yet even he who kills one is not held liable for harming the state, but for murder; even he who kills two, even he who kills more: tell me what number makes the state seem harmed. Two are crippled — the state is not yet harmed.

"They could have become leaders," he says. They could also have been temple-robbers and murderers; they could also have perished. "But he does a cruel thing, who out of his own resources ruined infants and forced the unhappy to beg." So does the trainer who forces young men to the sword, and he is not condemned for harming the state; and the pander who forces unwilling women to suffer outrage does not harm the state. I do not desire that the defendant be praised, but acquitted; let this harm him when he seeks office: a man can be both not honorable and an innocent defendant.

4.12. Then: whether, if the state has been harmed, it has been harmed by this man. "Not by me," he says, "but by the parents who cast them out: this man, cruel though he be, however much he took from them, gave back life." On the other side he says: "They expose them one by one, you cripple all; they take away hope, you the very instruments of living." Then: whether he is liable for harming the state, if he did what he is allowed to do. "No matter can be condemned by the law," he says, "which is permitted by the law. If I demolish my own house, do you say that I harm the state?" And you could have described how inhuman it is for those walls of one's ancestors, carried down even into our own memory, to be cast down in the fashion of an enemy.

4.13. If in my own fields I wished to cut down the orchards . . . Then: whether this was not allowed him to do. "It was allowed," he says; "the exposed are of no account; they are slaves; . . . it seemed good to their rearer." Finally, if it is not allowed, they have the law: each can sue by the talion, can sue for wrongs: but for harming the state no suit can be brought in the name of those who are outside the state. There can be no suit on behalf of all, on whose behalf, taken singly, there can be none.

4.14. I know that some think there is a question: whether the state can be harmed by a private man; SPARSUS, certainly, I remember declaiming so. But if anyone admits this, he will admit that one too: whether it can be harmed by a woman, by an old man, by a poor man — none of which is ever made a question, yet is wont to be said; just as, when that question is handled, whether the state has been harmed, so often the defendant, among the arguments that the state was not harmed, says: "It could not even be harmed by a private man, by a poor man, by a sick man, by an absent one." GALLIO made that question too: whether the state can be harmed in the exposed. "The state cannot be harmed," he says, "except in some part of itself; these are no part of the state; you will not find them in the census, not in wills." But this too runs into that one: whether the state has been harmed; for it is said: "It could not even be harmed in those whom it did not have."

4.15. For him who crippled the exposed very few indeed spoke. GALLIO spoke, and used this colour: that a needy man, who could not feed even himself, much less others, had taken up those who, already abandoned and without hope, scarcely drew breath, to whom no wrong was done if something was taken away, but a kindness given if life was preserved. "Let them stir up ill-will because one lacks eyes, another hands; let them say these men live so wretchedly through him — provided they confess that they live through him." GALLIO attempted this too among the arguments: "So far," he says, "was this thing from harming the state, that it can even be seen to have profited it:

4.16. fewer will there be who expose their sons." CLODIUS TURRINUS used this colour: that many fathers were wont to expose useless offspring. "There are born," he says, "some at once maimed in some part of the body, weak and fit for no hope, whom their parents cast away rather than expose; some too throw away house-slaves born under an unlucky omen or weak in body. Of these this man took up some, and with his own hand removed those parts which could make each the more pitiable: they beg a coin, and live by one man's mercy, are fed by all's. But it is a foul thing to keep beggars, to be fed by beggars, to dwell among cripples. Come, are you not ashamed to produce from this fellowship a defendant by whom you say the state was harmed?" And so he descended to the arguments, so as to say:

4.17. "How could this man harm it?" SILO POMPEIUS used that colour: that this man was merciful, that he wished to give life but could not feed them; and so was driven to this — that each should pay some part of his body for the whole. LABIENUS declaimed the part of him who crippled the exposed as eloquently as no one declaimed the other, though all the most eloquent men declaimed it as it were to test their own powers. That passage he spoke most vehemently: "It is strange that men have leisure for this thought, to care what a beggar does among beggars. Princely men," he says, "exercise their wealth against nature: they keep herds of the castrated; their catamites, that they may be fit for a longer endurance of unchastity, they mutilate, and because they are ashamed that the men are men, they bring it about that they be as few as possible.

4.18. These no one succours — these dainty and handsome cripples. It comes into your mind to take care who carries off from the wilderness infants destined to perish unless they are carried off; you do not care that those rich men cultivate their solitudes with workhouses of the freeborn; you do not care that they go round the simplicity of wretched youths and thrust each most handsome and most fit into the camp of the gladiator-school. It comes into your mind to pity these because they lack limbs; why not those because they have them?" And by this manner inveighing against the vices of the age, by an excellent figure he defended a defiled and infamous defendant by the impunity of greater crimes. This controversia is famous among the Greeks; many things were beautifully said by them, from which our men did not keep their hands; many things corruptly, to which they themselves too did not yield.

4.19. GLYCON said: "And do you ask maintenance for these, whom it is impious not to maintain?" P. ASPRENAS said this thought in the same way, using one word more apt: "These someone asks maintenance for, to whom he is cruel who refuses it." Akin to this thought is that one said by QUINTILIANUS: "I know not whether to call you more wretched because you receive maintenance, or because you give it; for you receive it because you are crippled, you give it to him through whom you are crippled." ADAEUS the rhetorician: "Weeping mothers contributed: 'If he is mine,' saying, 'for mine; if another's, that another may give for mine.'"

4.20. This thought certain Latins said, but so that I think they did not openly borrow this sententia, but imitated it. BLANDUS said: "Some woman, asked, holds out a coin to a beggar. Surely if she gave birth, she exposed. O how wretched is the thought of her who holds it out! 'This one, perhaps, is mine.'" OSCUS said: "Some woman, because she has already cast away her own, gives a coin to more than her own." ARELLIUS FUSCUS said: "A mother, asked, feeds her son; wretched if she knows it is her own, wretched if she does not." ARTEMON said: "The children of others, sound, sail, till the fields; but ours, maimed, feed — does the whole one feed them?"

4.21. This sententia Latro said more strongly and more manfully, who cannot be suspected of theft; for he both despised the Greeks and was ignorant of them. When he had described the feeble limbs of all, and some bent, some crawling, he added: "By the good gods! Is anyone fed whole by these?" DAMAS the elder said: "Once the danger to the exposed was to be cast away, now to be reared." This thought CESTIUS rendered: "You have brought it about," he says, "that there was greater peril in being reared than in being exposed." FUSCUS ARELLIUS said it otherwise: "Those things were still feared in the infancy of wretched lot: wild beasts and serpents, and the cold hostile to tender limbs, and want; among the perils of the exposed we did not count the rearer."

4.22. GLYCON said a corrupt sententia: "Let someone knock at the door of the rich, that he may bring." And that one: "Come, weep you, and you lament. O harmonies of evils!" But our men too have raved well. MURREDIUS said: "A long line of the wretched is brought forward; the greater part drags itself without itself." And LICINIUS NEPOS: "That you might be solvent for punishments, how often must you be born again?"

4.23. That thing SPARSUS said, which Montanus called not only corrupt but contrary: "You alone have more limbs than you have left to so many men." For thus this man can seem to have harmed the state, if many are crippled; but it appears there are not many, if he has more limbs than he has left to the crippled. And that too Montanus said was corruptly said by him: "There came forth more beggars than limbs." I report the Greek sententiae for this — that you may judge, first, how easy is the passage from Greek eloquence into Latin, and how everything that can be well said is common to all nations; then, that you may compare talents with talents, and consider that the Latin tongue has no less faculty, less license.

4.24. The sententia of Labienus I have set apart, because men had spoken about it: but it descends to the daily reckoning of the beggars' takings: "You have brought in less today; give me the lash; I am glad I have not maimed them all. Why do you weep? Why do you beg? You would have brought back more had you begged so." He said this sententia too: "Give the wretched that one joy which they can take: let one of them see this man condemned, let one hear it." ARTEMON . . . GLYCON said: "For the wretched joy is left."

4.25. P. VINICIUS, the supreme admirer of Ovid, said that this thought was most eloquently set down in Naso Ovidius — which he said should be kept in memory for inventing similar sententiae. When Achilles was slain, this epiphonema is set down:

"What joy old Priam could have after Hector, this was."

CASSIUS SEVERUS had said: "Show us your captives." JULIUS BASSUS had said: "Show your hirelings." LABIENUS seemed to have said more fitly: "Show us your fosterlings." P. Asprenas said, when he had brought in one holding out a coin to a beggar: "O unhappy father!" — and he who says this is himself perhaps a father.

5.1. OF GAVIUS SILO. The unhappy old man saw the ruins of his prostrate, dismembered country; torn from his wife, torn from his children, he stood over the ashes of burnt Olynthus; already he is sad enough for fashioning a Prometheus. By Jupiter! — for whom better should I call upon against Parrhasius than him whom he imitated? — do I except only the Olynthian from your painting? No one, to paint a shipwrecked man, has drowned a man.

He is beaten: "It is too little"; he is burned: "even now too little"; he is torn: "this," he says, "is enough for an angry Philip, but not yet for an angry Jove." OF JULIUS BASSUS. A boy is brought forward . . . "it is superfluous," he says; "he cannot yet groan as much as suffices for a Prometheus." The Olynthian's last entreaty is: "Athenian, give me back to Philip." This is no gift, it is sacrilege. "He was my slave," he says. You would think Philip were speaking. They flee to the temple of Minerva as to the camp of the Macedonians. OF CLODIUS TURRINUS. "He is too little sad," he says.

5.2. Is any Olynthian too little sad, except the one who has drawn an Athenian master by lot? Do you wish, Parrhasius, to see a sad man? I will show you greater torments: lead him to prostrate Olynthus, lead him there where he lost his children, where he lost his home; you surely know how sad a man you bought. We opened our city to the Olynthians — did we close our temples? Surely no Olynthian would have been tortured, if all the Macedonians had bought them. "Let him be tortured": this was not done even under Philip. "Let him die": this not even under Jove.

5.3. OF ARGENTARIUS. With this hospitality was the Olynthian received at Athens? And what besides? Did Parrhasius torture only the Olynthian, and not torture our eyes too? There he sets up the picture where perhaps we set up the tablet of the treaty. This is to make a Prometheus, not to paint one. He said to the torturers: "Strain him thus, beat him thus, preserve thus that very look which he now wears, lest you yourselves be the model."

5.4. OF CESTIUS PIUS. "I bought him," he says. Nay, if you are an Athenian, you ransomed him. If you do not know it, Parrhasius, in that temple we made vows on the Olynthians' behalf: are they thus to be paid? That cruel butcher of Greece did nothing more, even so, than sell him. A noble old man is brought forward, worn out by the long wasting of his miseries, his eyes drawn inward, as sad as if he had already been tortured. When he saw the chains brought to him: "They are superfluous," he said; "had I come to another master, I should flee to Athens." This I do not permit you with any Olynthian, unless you have bought a Lasthenes.

5.5. OF TRIARIUS. You have spoiled the two greatest gifts of Prometheus, fire and man. Whomever the crier saw weeping, he knew to be a buyer; all pitied him; and perhaps Philip himself would have ordered him brought back, even had he seen an Athenian for buyer — which I do not doubt to be a fable. But let Parrhasius choose which he will: either too impiously he defamed Jove, or he imitated him. That man kept crying: "You are not yet sad enough, not yet, I say, have you added enough to your former look." Such was Philip at the auction.

5.6. OF MUSA. I am about to tell of the fires, the lashes, the torments of the old Olynthian: someone now thinks I am complaining of Philip. The gods and goddesses destroy you! You have made Philip merciful. If you believe this man, he imitated an angry Jove; if us, he outdid an angry Philip. Paint Philip with crippled shank, with eye gouged out, with throat broken, tortured . . . by the immortal gods. OF CORNELIUS HISPANUS. With the last wasting of his limbs he dies amid the torments. Parrhasius, what are you doing? You do not keep your design; this is beyond Prometheus. As much must be suffered while Parrhasius paints as while Jove is angry.

5.7. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father. Paint Prometheus, but making men, but dividing the fire; paint him, but among gifts rather than among torments. Among the altars he has set up the cross of the old Olynthian. Most wretched old man, perhaps some one of your slaves serves more happily; at any rate happier is whoever serves a Macedonian.

5.8. OF FULVIUS SPARSUS. If you set out to succor him, I complain that you bought only one; if to torture him, I complain that you bought any. Would, Philip, that you had held your auction with a reservation: that no Athenian should buy. Phidias did not see Jupiter, yet made him as it were thundering; nor did Minerva stand before his eyes, yet his spirit was worthy of that art, and conceived gods and displayed them. What shall we do if you wish to paint a war? Shall we set up opposing battle-lines of men and arm hands for mutual wounds? Shall the conquered follow the conquerors? Shall they return bloody? Lest Parrhasius's hand toy idly with colors, must we buy at the cost of a human slaughter?

5.9. If someone must be tortured, buy a guilty slave, that at one and the same time you may both take an example and a punishment. On one side Parrhasius is set, with his colors; on the other a torturer, with fires, lashes, racks. Do you think him too little sad, Parrhasius, whether he sees these things or awaits them? The wretch kept saying: "I did not betray my country. Athenians, if I have deserved nothing, succor me; if I have deserved it, give me back to Philip." Amid this it is doubtful whether Parrhasius paints the more zealously, or that man rages the more.

5.10. He tortures, he scourges: thus does this butcher temper his colors. What do you say? Does he seem too little sad whom Philip sold, Parrhasius bought? "Now torture him, now; it is well, hold him thus: this look should be that of a man torn, this of a dying man." OF PORCIUS LATRO. If you think well, adorn the altar of mercy with these gifts. Does no one of the Olynthians, then, serve more wretchedly than he who drew an Athenian master by lot? The wretch, wherever he had not seen Philip, thought it peace. "Bind him," he says.

5.11. He kept saying: "Unbound was I under Philip." OF ALBUCIUS SILUS. Wait until a Euthycrates or a Lasthenes is captured. Phidias, Parrhasius, made everything without a torturer. Philip too was content to have sold him. A noble old man is brought forth, weeping, looking back upon his country: his look pleased that man; he had something like Prometheus even before the torments. He pleads his case carefully, as though before Philip: ". . . it is not for the Olynthian, I have lost my money." Go back to your model. For men's sake Prometheus was racked; for Prometheus's sake do not rack men. Philip was asked thus: "Let the Olynthians be allowed to live." Parrhasius must be asked otherwise: "Let the Olynthians be allowed to die." "I wish to make him sad." No one will make him so, if Philip did not.

5.12. This controversia a great part of the declaimers said in such a way as to divide not the controversia but the accusation — in the manner in which those are wont to arrange their pleading in the forum who accuse in the first place; in the school, because it is not spoken in two places, one must always not only speak but answer. They object that he tortured a man, that he tortured an Olynthian, that he imitated the punishments of the gods, that he set up a tablet in the temple of Minerva. If Parrhasius is not going to answer, they divide well enough. But nothing is more base than either to declaim a controversia in which nothing can be answered from the other side, or not to refute it if it can be answered.

5.13. GALLIO had in the Parrhasius case a division much like the one he had had in that controversia of which mention is made in this very book — of the man who crippled the exposed — with certain things removed. He divided thus: whether the state has been harmed. "What did he lose?" he says: "nothing. I do not yet make a controversia about the right. Olynthus lost one old man. Grant he is an Athenian: you will not sue me for harming the state if I kill an Athenian senator, but for murder." "So; but the reputation of Athens is corrupted; for mercy we have always been esteemed." Never is the public fame corrupted by the misdeed of one man; the reputation of the Athenians is too solid to be shaken in that way.

5.14. "The state has been harmed," he says. It has not been harmed, as I think. Suppose someone denied to an Olynthian a deposit: he would seem to have harmed not the state but the man. To the Olynthians you granted this — that they should be in the same standing as the Athenians. "You harmed the state," he says, "in that you set up this picture in the temple." They harm the state who take something away from it, not who add to it; who demolish temples, not who adorn them. The priests too sinned, then, who received the tablet. Yet why should they not receive it? The adulteries of the gods are painted; pictures of Hercules killing his children are set up.

5.15. Then: whether he can be accused of harming the state for that which he was allowed to do. Prosecute by that law what was not allowed. You say to me: "This ought not to be done." For this matter the valuation is immense; and so there is no penalty; and only that is punished which is not allowed. It is fully and abundantly enough if the craftsman, ignorant of affairs, is innocent before the law. Whether this was allowed him to do. This is divided into that: whether an Olynthian, before an Athenian, even before the decree was made, could not be a slave. "He is my slave," he says, "whom I possess by the right of war; and what is acquired by the right of war is valid. It is to your advantage, Athenians: otherwise your empire is reduced to its old boundaries; whatever there is, was acquired by war."

5.16. On the other side he says: "That slave can be another buyer's, not an Athenian's. For what if you had bought an Athenian from Philip? But you knew the Olynthians were joined to us by treaty." "That you may know," he says, "they were slaves, the decree of the Athenians was made afterward, by which they were ordered to be both free and citizens. Why was this right given them, if they already had it?" Then: whether by the decree it is not contained that they should become free, but that they should be judged to be free. "We decreed this — that the Olynthians are our citizens: so this man too was our citizen." "No," he says; "for the decree was made for the future. Surely you do not wish this to become law for the past? Surely whoever had an Olynthian slave will not be accused of having held a citizen in his slavery? If anyone then, amid the necessary services of slave-duties, struck or beat him, shall he be accused of wrongs?" And yet, as concerns the right, it makes no difference whether he killed or beat; for either it was not allowed to beat, or it was allowed to kill.

5.17. On Parrhasius's side he made this colour: that an old man, useless, at the point of death, had been bought by Parrhasius: "If you wish the truth," he says, "he did not kill him, but used the death of one failing and in any case about to die. He tortured him, however: if for gain, object it; surely Athens has the price of this cruelty." In the arguments he said how much had always been allowed to the arts: that physicians, to learn the unknown force of a disease, have cut into the entrails; that today the limbs of corpses are cut up, that the position of the sinews and joints may be known. ALBUCIUS with this colour: that the man was calamitous, bereaved, openly wishing for death; that Philip would not otherwise have sold him, had he not thought it a punishment for him to live.

5.18. SILO POMPEIUS thought it more convenient if Parrhasius had gone to the auction with this mind — to buy someone for this use; for then he can seem to have chosen the cheapest and most useless. FUSCUS ARELLIUS preferred that he had bought him indeed for other uses, but, when he was failing and wished to die, had spent him on that one thing which the artist could get from a corpse. GALLIO bound himself to neither, nor said with what mind he bought; but Gallio's colour is intolerable: for he said that he had bought the old man from the guilty Olynthians; and if he is allowed to invent this, I do not see why by the same means he should not say both that the man was privy to the betrayal of Lasthenes, and that he had tortured him for punishment's sake.

5.19. HISPO ROMANIUS excused him by ignorance: "A painter," he says, "shut within his workshop, who knew only these common laws — that nothing is not allowed to a master against a slave, nothing not allowed to a painter in painting — spent his own chattel upon his own work." "You do not tell all," he says: "it was an Olynthian who perished." But what does it matter to the case of what nation the slave was? "Do you dare," he says, "to call an Olynthian a slave, even after the war and before the decree? Otherwise what kindness did you do them, save that now it is allowed neither to torture nor to kill them?" The Greeks thought it impious to speak for Parrhasius: all accused him; they fell into the same thoughts.

5.20. GLYCON said: "Fire and man, Prometheus — your own gifts torture you." TRIARIUS, filching this in some part, twisted it. Such men, CASSIUS SEVERUS used to say, who did this, seemed to him like thieves changing the handles on others' cups: there are many who, by taking away a word or changing it or adding one, think they have made others' sententiae their own gain. TRIARIUS, however, turned it thus: "You have spoiled the two greatest gifts of Prometheus, fire and man." But the Greeks too stole it: EUCTEMON, who said:

5.21. "Prometheus, upon you someone brings fire and man" — more soundly than Glycon; ADAEUS: "Prometheus, someone painting you destroys a man"; DAMAS most corruptly: "Justly, Prometheus: why did you steal fire for man?"; CRATON most madly, who said: "Prometheus, now you should have stolen fire." This is Craton, a most charming man and an avowed Asianist, who waged war with all the Atticists. When Caesar made him a present of a talent — in which there are twenty-four sesterces by the Athenian reckoning — he said: "Either add to it or take from it, that it may not be Attic." He also, when Caesar would never hear him except in the month of December, said: "Do you use me as a furnace?" And when he was commended by Caesar to Passienus and did not pay court to him, and to one who asked why he did not embrace the favor of so great a man, he said: "While the sun burns, I do not light a lamp."

5.22. He often used to clash before Caesar with TIMAGENES, a man of acid tongue and one who was too free — I think because he had long not been free. From captive a cook, from cook a litter-bearer, from litter-bearer happy up to the most intimate friendship of Caesar, he so despised both fortunes — both the one he was in and the one he had been in — that, when Caesar, angry with him for many reasons, had forbidden him his house, he burned the histories of the deeds done by him, as though he too were forbidding Caesar the use of his own talent: an eloquent man and witty, by whom many things were said improperly but charmingly. That I may not exceed measure by running off, I return to Parrhasius.

5.23. NICETES said: "In fire, in iron, are you painting for us, or playing the tyrant?" HISPO ROMANIUS said: "Fire, iron, torments: is this a painter's workshop, or Philip's?" Sparsus's sententia in the description of the picture has something corrupt: "And wherever blood is needed, he uses human blood"; for he said what cannot be. That passage all attempted: "What if you wish to paint a war? What if a conflagration? What if a parricide?"

5.24. Of the Greeks DORION said madly: "What Oedipus will there be, what Atreus? For you will not paint unless you see the myths living." But there is nothing that can be less endured than what was said by METRODORUS: "Bring me no Trojan women, nor a Niobe. Apply the fire: not yet has he given me back my Prometheus." TRIARIUS said: "Not yet have you groaned worthily of an angry Jove." HATERIUS said more soundly: "Not yet does the look suit the story." And this: "Parrhasius, that all may be done according to the model, let him who has been tortured live." But, if you wish, hear that beyond which madness cannot proceed: LICINIUS NEPOS said: "If you wish to punish Parrhasius worthily, let him paint himself."

5.25. No less foolishly a certain AEMILIANUS, a Greek rhetorician — which kind of fool is the most lovable — out of dryness a simpleton, said: "Kill Parrhasius, lest, unwilling to paint, he find a model out of you." PAUSANIAS said: "Because of you, Parrhasius, those going out of the temple must purify themselves." OTHO the father, when he spoke for Parrhasius, was derided for this colour: "Because," he said, "Olynthus had fallen through traitors, I wished to paint Jove angry at his betrayer." GARGONIUS much more foolishly, as to why Parrhasius had painted Prometheus's punishment: "Should I," he says, "with Olynthus burning, not have hated the author of fire?" That famous

5.26. sententia of Latro is well known, which SPARSUS too, with certain words removed, said in the description of the torments: "'Parrhasius, I am dying'; 'hold him thus.'" This sententia they say DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS too said, not in the same way: "His disdain is past belief: at the look that pleased him he cried out, 'Stay.'"

5.27. SPYRIDION made the Romans speak honorably; for he raved far more violently than our frenzied men. He wished it to seem that vultures flew to Parrhasius's tablet — led by an elegant tale to a base sententia. For it is handed down that Zeuxis, I think, painted a boy holding a grape; and since the likeness of the grape was so great that it made even birds fly to the work, one of the spectators said that the birds judged ill of the painting; for they would not have flown to it if the boy had been like. Zeuxis, they say, smeared out the grape and kept that which was better in the picture, not that which was more like.

5.28. SPYRIDION likewise thought the vultures came into the temple as familiarly as sparrows or doves; for he had said: "Your painting devours its flesh-eating creatures." But I would not have the Romans beaten in anything: MURREDIUS will restore the line, who said: "Paint Triptolemus, who with yoked dragons furrowed the air." Among those who said something corrupt about Prometheus, APATURIUS too claims a place for himself; for he said: "Would that the fire had been stolen back to the gods."

6.1. OF PORCIUS LATRO. I took up only what the thief would have left. I feared nothing so greatly, as a thief, as that the owner should not acknowledge his own property. Stir up ill-will against me, betray my theft — yet thank the magistrate, that, when I had reported my theft to him, he did not order the thief to be removed. I restored by the ruin of one wall the tottering condition of the state. OF OSCUS. He was anxious lest what he had lost should be sought. I lay information: I have many accomplices of the theft. To that . . . I have not this theft alone. Is it a theft, which the owner fears to acknowledge? I could have been not poor, I had something to sell for much: behold, I hold letters in which there are manifest proofs of treason, in which the plans of the enemy. I ask you: if it is a theft, I put it back. OF MUSA. Do you call it theft, which the man who had lost it denied was his? I committed a theft, but against the enemy. OF CLODIUS TURRINUS. Do you call it theft, where the man who had lost it bore punishment, the man who took it away a reward? To which of the two would you have permitted to speak, if at the same time both the thief had come and the owner? I could have sold the state for much, even to the traitor. OF ARELLIUS FUSCUS the father.

6.2. You captains of a thousand ships took Troy by a theft. If cities are well overthrown by theft, how much better are they saved? If I do not disclose whose it is, no one will know. OF VIBIUS RUFUS. Whose breast itself, had I been able, not his wall only, I would have pierced through. I have not yet fully accomplished my whole duty: the state is not so narrow that it can be crushed by one man. OF CESTIUS PIUS. Do not demand of me everything I know; there are many things, some to be told even in the assembly. Teach this theft to your children. I ask you, judges, by my theft: as often as I brought forward my theft, the owner is silent. I a thief? Behold a second wrong. "Did you not," he says, "pierce through the house?" Be silent, I would not . . . better. I am wont to tell, I would not deny for a price . . .