Book 2

1. The man to be adopted after three sons were disowned. A rich man disowned three sons; he asks a poor man for his only son in adoption. The poor man is willing to give him; when the son refuses to go, the father disowns him. The son speaks against it.

I never thought it would come about that either my father would hate his children or a rich man would covet them. Long I was in doubt: was the one trying out a friend, or the other a son? Are we then so poor, who have something rich men ask for? If he disowned them undeservedly, I hate a father who casts out so many innocent sons; if deservedly, I hate a house that makes so many guilty. I love poverty equally with my father; I am accustomed to both. Your house is not propped up by many children — though even so you ought not to have given me away; for he is safer against fortune who has something left after his loss. "I disown you," he says; it is plain where you come from. There is but one dispute between us: he thinks me worthy of a fortunate father, I think myself worthy of my own. "I want you to be rich," he says. O I deserve to be disowned, if I leave such a father behind! What you would have me seem I do not know: innocent? but I am disowned; guilty? but I am adopted. Not, as in other disownings, is it in my power not to be disowned: I shall lose my father if I am disowned, and lose him if I am not disowned. What difference is there whether I am cast out or transferred? Although a father is to be obeyed in all things, in this he is not to be obeyed — in that by which he ceases to be a father. It is hard to be without an only son; harder to be without the one whom another covets. The unknown herds of slaves do not delight their master, nor the sounding workhouses of a broad estate: I love my father for nothing. I must needs fear a house unlucky in its children. No fitter time for reconciliation can be found: the rich man is looking for sons.

The other side. Among the rest of poverty's drawbacks this too is great: that a son does not fear being disowned. Wealth raises a man to senatorial rank; wealth marks off the Roman knight from the commons; wealth promotes a man's rank in the camp; by wealth a juror is chosen in the forum. It is easier to praise poverty than to bear it. "If my sons are reformed," he says, "I shall have this one along with them; if they persist, I shall have him in their place."

Outside. Dry declaimers keep more faithfully to the colours they have proposed; for no sweetness of some epigram steals in upon them, no figure tempts them aside. So women who are plain are often chaste: it is not the will they lack, but the corrupter. Gallus Vibius was once a man of as great eloquence as he afterwards was of madness; and he is the only man I know to whom it happened that he came to madness not by chance but by deliberate choice; for while he imitated madmen, while he took frenzy for a charm of talent, what he was feigning he reduced to fact. Otho Junius the father published four books of colours, which our friend Gallio neatly calls the books of Antiphon: so much of dreams is there in them. Syriacus, against Maximus Stertinius, by whom he was being pressed hard, though he had been his companion, said: "For fifteen years I was in your service; tell me what wrong I have done. But this is your way: you call the end of servitude an injury."

2. The oath of husband and wife. A husband and wife swore that, if anything happened to one of them, the other would die. The husband went abroad; he sent a messenger to his wife to say that he had died. The wife threw herself down. Revived, she is ordered by her father to leave her husband; she will not. She is disowned. She speaks against it.

Immortal gods, with what wisdom you owe and you rule the human race: you brought it about that this should be not a danger to one who loved, but a test. Does my father-in-law wish to part those whom not even death will part? "I will die," she says; "I have both cause and example: some women have flung themselves into the burning pyres of their husbands, some have bought their husbands' safety with their own lives. By a brief anxiety this girl is counted, alive, among these." There were constant rivalries: "I cannot live without you" — "no, rather, I cannot live without you"; and as such contests usually end, we swore an oath. This without doubt was the mind of those who swore: that they should not be parted in life, since they took precaution even for this — that they should not be divided by death.

The other side. "I cannot," she says, "leave my husband." Can she not do anything, who can die? She had hardly sent the message of a false death when she received the message of a true one. You can bear to be without your husband; you have borne his journey abroad. You have already been freed of your oath by the latest chance.

Outside. Ovid Naso declaimed this controversia in the school of Arellius Fuscus, his teacher; for he was an admirer of Latro. Latro in a certain preface had said: "Do you not see how a torch, when unmoved, grows dull, and recovers its fire when shaken? Leisure softens men; iron contracts rust through lying idle." Naso said: "I myself have seen flames grow when the torch was shaken, and again die when no one stirred them." This man too said: "The whole labour lies in this — that you grant a wife to love her husband and a husband to love his wife. Then you must needs permit them to swear, if you have permitted them to love." By the same man: "You know few of my faults, father: we have quarrelled at times, and have fallen, and — what perhaps you do not think — we have sworn falsely." Asked once by his friends to strike out three lines, he in turn asked that three be excepted, over which they should have no power. They had written in secret the lines they wanted struck out, he the ones he wanted kept safe: in both sets of tablets the same lines were found, of which, the story goes, the first was — Albinovanus Pedo had been among the arbiters — "the half-bull man and the half-man bull"; the second: "and the chill North Wind and the unchill South." From which it appears that this man of the highest talent lacked not judgement to restrain the licence of his verses, but the will. He used to say that a face was sometimes more becoming for having some mole upon it.

3. The ravisher who does not win over the father. Let a ravisher, unless within thirty days he has won over both his own father and the father of the ravished woman, perish. A ravisher won over the ravished woman's father; he does not win over his own. He prosecutes him for madness.

Why do you tremble, old age? Why, tongue, do you falter? Why have you gone numb, my eyes? It is not yet the thirtieth day. Not even with a sadder face did he take his daughter's chastity stormed away from her. He was won over too quickly. Not to trace all his vices back to boyhood: he ravished a virgin; he prosecutes his father — all this within thirty days. Do you think I shall promise to an accuser what I refused to a son? Do you wonder that a father hesitates? The law itself hesitates between death and marriage. He has always believed that everything was permitted him; he has never asked anything of me. "He pardoned the man," you say. So was anyone asked before me? I am mad, you see; doubtless I live disgracefully, I know nothing of the law, I do not count your days. "You are mad," you say. Can anyone pardon a man who asks like this? "I will deliberate with my friends, I will deliberate with my kinsmen." Wretched me, how nearly I promised! Wretched me, that I have only thirty days to be angry! Why do you wonder if you won over the other man more quickly? It is easier to forgive an injury than a crime. Come forward into the midst, old man, by whose mercy I am made cruel. "Now," he says, "the time is short — and have you leisure to prosecute?" Is this how a man wins another over? Is this how he pleads? It is plain that now for the first time you are asking. For what have I done like a madman? I have not been won over. The time has not yet passed; even now I can be won over. How unfair it is that I am not yet guilty and already a defendant!

The other side. Wretched me, father! Nothing has been taken from your anger, much from the time. I am more unfortunate than if I had won over neither. If you mean to save your son, there has already been time; if to kill him, there is time now. The man who was more feared was asked first.

4. The grandson got of a prostitute. A certain man disowned his son. The disowned son betook himself to a prostitute and got a son by her. Falling ill, he sent for his father; when his father had come, he commended the boy to him and died. The father, after his son's death, took the grandson into adoption. He is accused by his other son of madness.

A new kind of madness is charged against me: I should have been sane, had I not acknowledged my own. I kept waiting for someone to plead for the disowned man: none of his kinsmen dared, since his brother held back. His failing breath was sustained until my coming. I entered; his eyes, already sinking, he raised at my name, and held back his fleeing spirit. Into my lap he laid both his son and his last breath. It was told me that my son was at the point of death — and not by his brother.

The other side. This boy's father is uncertain: it would go well with him, if his mother too were uncertain. Among his other misfortunes he fell in with a prostitute — and a fertile one. I do not know whether the woman did the more wrong against the father in taking from him an heir or in giving him one. He adopted the son of the very woman for whose sake he had cast out his own.

5. The wife tortured by the tyrant on her husband's behalf. A wife, tortured by a tyrant as to whether she knew anything of her husband's plot against him, persisted in denying it. Afterwards her husband killed the tyrant. Within five years he divorced her, since she bore no child, on the ground of barrenness. She brings an action against him for ingratitude.

The marriage which the tyrant did not part, the tyrannicide has parted. Married women were dragged off, virgins were carried away; none then seemed more fortunate than those who had no children. The tyrant suspected this man of plotting his death, whether something slipped from him or his face did not well conceal great designs; yet he cannot complain of his wife's tongue, since he knows how she keeps silent. Set upon the rack, she looked back more often to her absent husband than to the tyrant before her eyes. The whole apparatus of tyrannic cruelty is unrolled against the unhappy woman, and those instruments that break the very spirits of men by the mere sight of them are set out to wring from her the knowledge in a woman's breast; her body is torn apart with stripes. I do not know, commonwealth, whether that woman will give you children; she gave you a tyrannicide. Do you wonder if five years passed between a tortured wife and a busy husband? Her body slit with whips, scorched with fire, racked with torments — you will pardon the woman, I think, if I say: she is weary. Why do you boast of tyrannicide? It is easier to kill a tyrant than to endure one. Whips, hot plates, the rack, whatever ancient savagery had devised, whatever the new age had added — what more shall I say? The tyrant tortured her even when he was inquiring about tyrannicide. Does she burden your purse, costly in her expenses, and, as the way of the age is — luxury flowing ever to the worse — does a woman's vanity rage in mutual rivalry to the point of public harm by private extravagance? Does she ask for gems and little stones sought from a foreign shore? Wait, she can yet bear a child; fertility does not answer to a fixed day. Nature is her own mistress. Which do you think the more to be wondered at — your tyrannicide or her silence?

The other side. "I was tortured." You would justly reproach me with it, had I not avenged you. Even if you knew of your husband's tyrannicide and did not betray it, it is no service not to commit a crime. And besides, you did not know; for I did not tell you, nor did I entrust so great a design — heavy even for the spirits of men — to a woman's chatter, which can keep silent only about what it does not know. At the time my wife was tortured I was thinking nothing yet of tyrannicide; afterwards I thought of it, and this very thing, the avenging of my wife, was my reason for thinking of it. If she kept silent about what she had heard, it is no service but mere good faith.

Outside. Lucius Vinicius, than whom no Roman citizen had a readier talent in pleading cases. Whatever long reflection was to furnish him, the first effort of his mind gave; he pleaded cases extempore, yet he did not desire this commendation — that he should seem to plead extempore. Of him the deified Augustus elegantly said: "Lucius Vinicius keeps his talent in ready cash."

6. The dissolute father and son. A certain man, while his son lived in dissipation, began to live in dissipation himself. He is accused by his son of madness. The father speaks against it.

My accuser has within him conflicting feelings: he longs that the defendant be condemned and the charge acquitted. "But you are an old man," he says; this is what you mean: my dissipation began later and will end sooner. Some have said that the highest good is pleasure. I have no need of those who lay down precepts; I have an example. I have shown you the dissipation in yourself that you did not see in yourself. Drunk, you charge your father with drunkenness.

The other side. A young man who is dissolute sins; an old man who is dissolute is mad. No one imitates vices because he hates them. What general ever fled the battle himself, that his army might fight well? He does not check vices who provokes them. I too shall lay my own dissipation to my father's charge. I was not under a strict discipline, not under the rule of a well-ordered house, which might have formed a young man's character and led him away from the vices of his age. In a sense I was sent ahead to dissipation by my father. Grey hairs dripping with perfume, and an old reveller, are too dissolute for no one, but seem to no one quite sane.

7. The foreign trader. A certain man who had a beautiful wife went abroad. A foreign trader moved into the woman's neighbourhood; three times he solicited her for sexual relations, raising his offers; she refused. The trader died; in his will he left the beautiful woman heir to all his goods, and added this notice: "because I found her chaste." She entered upon the inheritance. The husband returns and accuses her of adultery on suspicion.

Late is the complaint I bring: I do not accuse my wife of adultery until she is made rich. After such great profits of unchastity, if I can keep silent, I must confess that this was my reason for being away. It is time that a husband be believed concerning his wife. Let a married woman keep her eyes cast down to the ground, and toward an obliging caller be ungracious rather than immodest; let her refuse her unchastity by her looks far sooner than by her word. No one will ask again the woman who refuses with spirit. "Be sole heir of all my goods, because you could not be corrupted, because you so faithfully guarded your chastity." Pass over for a moment the name of the author: is it not the will of a husband that is believed? Has all the forbearance of our age now so departed that, against a husband's complaint, a wife is defended by another man's testimony? The foundation of women's vices is greed. She who can be without fear of the reputation of adultery, can be without fear of adultery. From every reef the purple-fish is gathered, with which the dress may be stained as with blood. Unhappy throngs of slave-girls labour, that the adulteress may be visible through a thin gown, and that a husband may know nothing more in his own wife's body than any stranger or foreigner. The old verdict I will assess by the future; meanwhile, what asks for her he found her — unchaste. All call you unchaste; chaste only one man, and a foreigner, who does more harm as praiser than as accuser. I never heard my wife called chaste except in the adulterer's notice. Cast your eyes to the ground and shut your ears to the voices of strangers: let each man refuse for himself on your behalf. He called her chaste, I call her unchaste: you will, I think, believe a citizen rather than a foreigner, a husband rather than an adulterer. The very notice he wrote with the mind of a seducer. "Because I found her chaste," he says — which befell no man but me.

The other side. She is beautiful: this was Nature's fault. She was without her husband: this was the husband's fault. She was solicited: this was another man's fault. She refused: this was chastely done. She was left an heir: this was good fortune. She entered upon the inheritance: this she did deliberately.