Book 5

1. The cut noose. Let there be an action for recorded wrongdoing. A certain man, after a shipwreck, having lost three children and his wife in the burning of his house, hanged himself. One of the passers-by cut the noose for him. By the man he had freed he is made defendant for wrongdoing.

"I lost three children," he says. Would that I could have saved them too! Live; the turns of human fortune change: a proscribed man once proscribed others. The conquered flee, the proscribed lie hidden, the shipwrecked swim. "I lost," he says, "my wife, my children, my patrimony." Did you think you had received them on this condition, that you should never lose them? Fortune plays with her own gifts, and what she has given she takes away, what she has taken away she gives back; nor is it ever safer to make trial of her than when she has no room for injury. Gnaeus Pompeius, conquered in the line at Pharsalia, lived on. Do you think your own shipwreck greater? Crassus lived; and he had lost not private but public resources. Fortune has taken everything from you, but she has left you hope. Take away hope from men, and no conquered man will take up arms again, no one whose venture has failed will seek other gains, no shipwrecked man will live. Hope is the last solace of adversity. To live, you swam. I had pity, and I thought of nothing in your case beyond the danger: I did not attend to the fire, nor to your bereavement, or if I did attend to them, I remembered that you had lived after those things. He did not seem to me to have the mind to die: he had chosen a place where he could be interrupted.

The other side. I, master of so many estates, hang my noose from another man's tree. Of fortune I make no complaint: it permits me to die. "Now," he says, "die." It is an injury, that I who ought to die at my own pleasure should die at yours. I have lost wife, children, patrimony; fortune left me nothing but a noose, and this man not even a noose. I took up the instruments of death, solitude and a noose — the one fit for a dying man, the other for a wretched one. Whoever you are that come upon me, if a friend, weep; if you are an enemy, look on. Since I am accused by this man, pass a heavier sentence upon me than upon the defendant: that I may die, that he may not prevent it. Lest I should tell this tale, I wished to die. He cut short my remedy. If there is any faith to be had, I did not swim ashore, but was cast up. Now I feared nothing but to live. I am closing the destinies of my house, more wretched than any only in this — that I die last. For what life do you reserve me? To build? Look at the fire. To sail? Look at the shipwreck. To rear children? Look at the tomb. In so calamitous a house you were the more fortunate, my wife and children: to you it fell to die.

2. The son-in-law of a rich enemy. A poor man who had a son, and a rich enemy who had a daughter, set out abroad. There was a rumour of his death. The son made peace with the rich man and married his daughter. The father, on his return, compels him to repudiate his wife; when he refuses, he disowns him.

No one easily believes anything which, if believed, must be grieved over. I, for a long time, did not believe the report of your marriage. Deserter of your father, client of his enemy, slave of your wife, you did not weep for your father, you did not seek for him; thus you pleased his enemy. "There had been a rumour," he says, "that you had died." I wondered if you could have had such a wife while your father lived. Do you not ask where I perished? My death ought to be suspect to you: I have an enemy. Who else could have set this report abroad but the man who, while I lived, could not give his daughter in marriage? Do you not fear that, in the very midst of your wedding, your father's bones may be brought back? So many slaves attend me, so many freedmen, so many clients, that whatever one of them says becomes a rumour. Fabricius would not take gold from Pyrrhus; he was richer in spirit than the other in his kingdom. I escaped several ambushes on my journey, and the rich man believed that done which he had ordered to be done.

The other side. Hatred of riches is an empty kind of glory. Enmities ought to be mortal. Scipio was Gracchus's enemy, and yet afterwards his father-in-law. Through whose fault the enmity was contracted is plain: he loves your son, you do not love even your own.

Outside. Senianus said a very foolish thing: "The rich man always despised me, never held me as other than dead." That I too may say something like Senianus, after this epigram I always held Senianus as dead.

3. The brothers who were prizefighters. Let there be an action for ill-treatment. A certain man trained two sons as prizefighters; he brought them to Olympia. When they had been matched to fight together, the father came up to them as they fought and said he would disown the one who lost. The young men died together, and divine honours were decreed to them. The father is made defendant by his wife for ill-treatment.

You fought as a third without drawing lots, and conquered both. The father stood there, bloodstained; they had already perished, and still he threatened. They die not one by the other, but both by their father. The wretched mother cannot hate the man who killed her son. Young men unconquered, had they not had a father. Dutiful young men, you could not even refuse your father a parricide. They are unwilling to conquer, because of the parricide; unwilling to be conquered, because of the disowning. "I disown the one who is conquered." Madman, you will disown the better. I call upon Jupiter, whose Olympia have been cleared of parricide.

The other side. I did not mean to do it, and even if I meant to, I said it for the sake of glory. I ought not to be the only one in odium, when the loss is shared. All said the brothers would play at it together. I threatened not to lay fear upon my sons, but to satisfy the people.

4. The man condemned for parricide who binds his brother. Let one who has given false testimony be imprisoned in the house of the man against whom he gave it. Of two sons, the father set out with one; the young man returned alone. He was accused by his brother of parricide and condemned. Festal days intervening, his punishment was deferred by law; the father returned. The condemned man accused his brother of false testimony and won, and bound him. The father compels him to release the bound man; when he refuses, he disowns him.

"He gave false testimony," he says, "against his brother." If you wish to make his crime grave, show yourself open to entreaty. Cruel toward your brother, do you wonder if a parricide was believed of you? May I not, then, have two sons? Young man, you are now able even to commit parricide. One son was bound because I was not returning, the other because I returned. Will you never release your brother? If you are such a man, the witness lied in nothing: you are a parricide. He spoke not with a mind impious toward you, but pious toward your father: he held it suspect that you had left your father. I lie among my son's chains, shut in the same workhouse. Ingrate, you have bound your witness along with you.

The other side. Released at my peril, bound at my peril, he could scarcely have been released, had he given false testimony for his brother. He feigned a parricide concerning his father, and committed one concerning his brother. The executioner announced to me that my father had come. I am a parricide, as is charged, if I am even slightly angry with him. Do you wonder if I can bind the brother who could have killed me? The very deferral of my punishment was unwelcome: to wait seemed worse than to suffer; I pictured to myself the sack, the serpents, the deep.

5. The house burned along with the tree. Let one who has knowingly done damage pay fourfold; one who has done it unknowingly, the simple amount. A rich man asked his poor neighbour to sell him a tree which he said stood in his way. The poor man refused; the rich man set fire to the plane-tree, and with it the house burned too. For the tree he offers fourfold, for the house the simple amount.

Roused by the sound of the flames, I first tested the good faith of my neighbours. The tree, with its branches running out, had covered the whole house. "He cannot be entreated; let it be burned." This is the mark of one without self-control, to covet without end, to be angry without measure. "He cannot be stormed by prayers; let him be driven out by fire." There is no difference between you and a poor man, if we proceed by law. Let even a poor man be allowed to enjoy a prospect. You possess the territories of cities, and fill cities with your houses; within your buildings you enclose waters and groves. Nothing more elegant meets your eyes than my ruin. I have lost a house, I who could not do without even a little tree. Rich man, shall we burn for your delights? In a fire, pleasure is sought for the eyes, and a prospect is opened up by flames. "It blocked the prospect." What? As we walk, do not troops of slaves block us? Do not walls raised to an immense height shut out the light? Do not promenades stretched over endless spaces, and houses built upon the ground of whole cities, all but shut us off from the public street? Beneath this little tree I imagined to myself the forests of the rich. How much have I lost, whom even my angry enemy admits to have lost more than he wished? I make no unfair demand: let the fire end with the loss of the man whose plan it began with. Doubtless, that houses turned to face the whole sky may have wintry heats and summer chills, and that the year, against its own turns, may be driven within these men's homes, they nourish on their topmost roofs lying groves and the straits of navigable fishponds. Lands once ploughed for whole peoples are now the workhouses of single men, and overseers rule more widely than kings. Seas are pushed back by jutting moles. Did you not know how great is the power of fire, how irrevocable, how it consumes whole cities, from how slight beginnings fires arise? Even if you did not wish to do part of the damage, yet if you wished to do part, you must be held for the whole, as if you had done it knowingly; for he who is defended on the ground of ignorance must have been wholly unwilling. If you were to admit that you knowingly set fire to the door, to a single beam, I think the whole house would be understood from the part; for no one sets fire to everything, but to some one thing, from which the fire rises to scatter itself over all. And yet a tree that is in a house is part of the house.

The other side. The tree made my house unhealthy: it had blocked the whole sky through which a wholesome breath could come. I asked the poor man and said: "The tree, cut down, does you no harm; uncut, it does me very much. What are those branches to you that are outside the house?" The branches were pressing on certain parts of my house; they had already even shifted some of the walls. You know how great is the force of trees; they shatter walls.

6. The man carried off in woman's dress. Let an unchaste man be barred from the public assembly. A handsome young man made a wager that he would go out into public in a woman's dress. He went out; he was carried off by ten young men. He accused them of violence and got them condemned. Barred from the assembly by the magistrate, he makes the magistrate defendant for injury.

He put on a woman's dress, arranged his hair in a woman's style, encircled his eyes with girlish allurement, coloured his cheeks. Do you not believe it? Even those who had not believed it lost their wager, and perhaps it came of the wager that he dared, an unchaste man, to address the assembly. Give him a girl's dress, give him night: he will be carried off. The dress, once put on, so became him that he seemed not to have put it on then for the first time. The deeds of his whole youth I pass over; I am content with one night: so well did he imitate a girl that he found a ravisher. Did I strike anyone? Did I compose a defamatory song, or — to call it by the special name of the injury done you — did I carry you off? Among our forefathers, a man who entered upon his service in the courts thought it wrong to bare his arm from the toga. How far from these manners were men who used even their virtue so modestly? It is agreed that this man was outraged, since those who carried him off were condemned.

The other side. It is agreed that he was always grave, always serious; but this was done by the jests of young men. For the rest, his modesty was so well known that no one would now believe it without a wager.

7. The men not received by the general. Let it not be lawful to open the gates by night in war. Let a general in war have supreme power. Three hundred men, taken captive by the enemy, came to the gates by night; the general did not open; before the gates they were killed. After the victory the general is made defendant for harming the commonwealth.

I did not think them my own men; they knew the law. "Why," he says, "did the three hundred perish?" Nay, why, that they might not perish, were they taken captive? These men I would not have received by day, unless as conquerors; by night, not even as conquerors. Going forth the next day into battle, I showed to men about to fight three hundred in whom nothing could be praised but flight, nothing missed but their number. They flee, to forsake the laws; they return, to abolish them. The Roman people, in the battle of Cannae, reduced to the utmost straits, when it longed for the help of slaves, despised that of captives, and believed that those could better guard liberty who had never had it than those who had lost it. By night, how am I to distinguish enemy and citizen? What mark do you give me, that I may recognize their arms? I believe the enemy were in ambush, to kill those shut out, and pursue those let in.

The other side. He was hostile to the three hundred; he had stationed them in an unfavourable place; that this might not be proved, he did not receive them. Most valiant generals have been taken captive — Regulus, Crassus. This was the last word of the men entreating: "Send us arms"; this at least the law does not forbid.

8. The tyrant a candidate after an amnesty. Let it be lawful for a candidate to speak against a candidate. A tyrant laid down his despotism under an amnesty, so that if anyone reproached him with the tyranny, he should be punished with death. He seeks a magistracy; a rival candidate speaks against it.

As a candidate I pledge, in my year, no woman shall be carried off, no man killed, no temple plundered. Let him tell why for so long he has held no offices — I beg it by our common liberty. I shall die; it will be cast in your teeth that you killed a citizen. He wishes to be distinguished by some command, some power — a man of great nobility, great influence, vast wealth. There is said to have been a master of Sicily who shut men in bronze bulls and burned them with fires set beneath, so that they uttered a bellowing and could not utter words. O a man fastidious in his very cruelty, who, though he wished to torture, yet was unwilling to hear!

The other side. Whatever I did, whatever I carried out, I did for the sake of the commonwealth. I ask that the law passed for me do me no harm, nor that anything harm me because that is not charged which, if charged, would do no harm.