Book 9

1. Cimon ungrateful to Callias. Whoever catches an adulterer with the adulteress, provided he kill both, shall be free of guilt. Let there be an action for ingratitude. Miltiades, condemned for embezzlement, died bound in prison. His son Cimon, to bury him, gave himself as a substitute for his father's body. Callias, a rich man of base birth, ransomed him from the commonwealth and paid the money, and gave him his daughter in marriage. Cimon, catching his wife in adultery, killed her, though her father pleaded for her. He is accused of ingratitude.

To me, adultery is a prison. Shall I throw away the sword handed me by the law for the avenging of chastity? You lost your money, Callias, if you freed such hands. A high-born spirit cannot endure insult. This is the difference between the fortune of the father and the son: that for him prison was the end of his calamities, for me the beginning. The one whole estate of Miltiades that was found was his son Cimon. Cimon ransomed is the good fortune of his ransomer. I will return the favour when you have asked for one as honourable as the one you gave. Shall I let adulterers go? What else would I do, if I still had my hands bound? What? Do you think it a punishment to be bound for Miltiades? We each, while we gave a great benefit, received one: I, in that I ransomed Miltiades; you, in that you ransomed Cimon. I thought it most disgraceful that both adulterers and Cimon should be let go by the same man. I am the man who does not cease to return thanks even to the dead: so may it fall to me to have true children — and how great that is, Miltiades found by experience. Callias deserved to have begotten such a man as he ransomed. Say now, "I freed you from prison," that I may answer, "I gave myself to prison." It will never come about that I think it better done that I was ransomed by Callias than that I was bound for Miltiades. I thought myself ransomed by you: you bought me for your daughter. I married Callias's daughter: this wrong, father-in-law, I did to you, while I am unwilling to be ungrateful. I cannot be condemned for what I did by law. It is a benefit which is wholly bestowed for the sake of the man on whom it is conferred; where a man hopes for or prepares something out of it, it is not a benefit but a calculation. I freed you from the utmost dishonour; you received the benefit unwillingly. You ransomed me, and that without my asking. Set here the Verginii, and all who have either shut up or killed their violated daughters.

The other side. I gave two benefits: I both ransomed him and gave him my daughter in his need. I charge you with this, that you suffered your wife to become an adulteress, that you did not guard her, that you delayed until her father came up as a spectator of his own calamity. I had not waited until I was asked. You took it ill that Callias was called your father-in-law. You not only suffered the girl's character to slip into vices, but yourself drove it; having found the occasion, you did not let it slip.

Outside. The colour pleased Gallio and Latro and Montanus, that nothing should be said insultingly against Callias, against the ransomer, against the father-in-law, against the unhappy man. Many things said by the Greeks the Roman orators, historians, and poets did not steal, but challenged. There is a saying of Thucydides: "For prosperity is apt to cover over and shadow the faults of each." Of Sallust: "Prosperity is wonderfully a screen for vices." Since the chief virtue in Thucydides is brevity, in this Sallust outdid him, and felled him in his own camp. For in the Greek saying, brief as it is, you have what you may take away with the sense unharmed: remove either "cover over," or "shadow," or "of each," the sense will stand, even if not equally trim, yet equally whole. But from Sallust's saying nothing can be taken away without loss of sense. Titus Livius, however, was so unfair to Sallust that he charged this very saying against him as both translated and as corrupted in the translating: and he does it not from love of Thucydides, that he should prefer him, but he praises one he does not fear, and thinks Sallust can be more easily conquered by himself if he is first conquered by Thucydides.

2. Flamininus punishing a defendant at dinner. Let there be an action for treason. The praetor Flamininus, at dinner, being asked by a prostitute, who said she had never seen a man beheaded, killed one of the condemned. He is accused of treason.

Do I charge him with luxury, play-acting, jests? Or do you do nothing else at a banquet but kill? For a single kiss, perhaps, he made a gift of a homicide. About to dine, the executioners wash their hands. I do not inquire into the whole year; I am content with one night. It is easier that a man who has given much to a prostitute should deny a homicide, than that a man who has given a homicide should deny anything. If you had wished a slave to be flogged, you would have taken him out of the banquet. A table touched with human blood, axes drawn in the dining-room: who believes that a prostitute longed for these things, or that a praetor did them? The rods are brought out, and before the table and the gods a victim of cruelty is butchered. Wretched me, you made a plaything of the terror of the Roman empire. Let him fall to the law rather than to a harlot. Rise up, you Bruti, Horatii, Decii, and all the other glories of the empire: with your fasces, with your axes, now obscene girls make sport. In that which is done under the cover of the public majesty, whatever wrong is committed must be avenged by an action for treason. The lictor, about to strike, looks to the praetor, the praetor to the prostitute.

The other side. If an envoy brings false instructions, they are heard as though the Roman people had given them; if a general strikes a treaty, the Roman people seems to have struck it and is bound by the treaty: yet now nothing has been taken from the strength of the people nor from its repute. But men judge the rest from you. Both before him there were others by whom they could be judged. No one ascribes the vices of individuals to cities. They charge that a condemned man perished to please a prostitute, and they demand that a praetor perish for a condemned man. All the lust is within the prostitute, all the cruelty within the prison. The Roman people has borne many things in its commanders: in Manlius the want of self-control, by whom even his own son and a victor was killed; in Sulla cruelty; in Lucullus luxury; in many greed. I did not think it pertinent where or when a man should perish who deserved to perish. Who was killed? A condemned man. Where? In the praetorium. At what time? Is there then a time at which a guilty man ought not to perish?

Outside. There are certain controversiae in which the deed can be defended but cannot be excused. We do not hope that the judge will approve of Flamininus, but that he will acquit him; and so we ought to plead as for a deed not corrected, but not criminal. Titus Livius, of orators who hunt after antique and mean words and think the obscurity of an orator to be severity: "Yet in these, even if there is less madness, there is less hope. Those who swell, who labour under abundance, have more frenzy, but more body too; it is always easier to bring to soundness what can be cured by taking away; he cannot be helped who at once both raves and is wanting." Murredius spoke a tetracolon: "The forum was a slave to the bedchamber, the praetor to the prostitute, the prison to the banquet, the day to the night." The last clause was spoken without sense, that the sense might be filled out; for what sense has "the day was a slave to the night"? I have related this saying for this reason, that both in tricola and in all sayings of this kind we take care that the number be complete, and do not take care that the sense be. But I set out all kinds of corrupt sayings on purpose, because we are more easily taught by example both what is to be imitated and what avoided.

3. The man reclaiming one of two exposed children. Let things done by force and fear be invalid. Let agreements made according to the laws be valid. Let one who recognizes an exposed child take it back on repaying the cost of its rearing. A certain man took up two exposed children and reared them. To the natural father, who was seeking them, he promised to tell where they were, if he gave him one of the two. An agreement was made between them. He gives him back the two, and reclaims one.

When we divide our children with strangers, whom do we not divide with their mothers? I begot both, I longed for both, I bargained for both. Together they were born, together exposed, together reared; given back, they are torn apart. Fortune once tore them from their parents, never from each other. I exposed the two, because I could not choose between them. At an auction the hostile spear does not divide brothers, though it be hostile: it is something more to be twins than brothers; each loses his own grace unless he is with the other. Let him pardon me for keeping mine, since he himself covets another's. Shall recognition divide those whom even exposure joined? I bargain for everything for my son except my son. I bargained weeping, trembling, as when I exposed them. There was upon me then force and necessity; for I could not find my sons unless I promised one of them.

The other side. You can dismiss the father from this trial in both characters. This man is accustomed to be without children; but I, even when I have received one, must needs be tortured: I have grown used to two. Do you call force what made you a father? I took them up, I reared them, I gave them back; he is to choose. By this force I have lost two sons. The law embraces arms and chains and the utmost peril.

Outside. Against Clodius Sabinus, declaiming on one day in both Greek and Latin, many witty things were said. Haterius said, to certain men complaining that he took small fees, since he taught two subjects, that those who teach interpretations never take large fees. Maecenas said: "the son of Tydeus — you could not tell to which side he belonged." Cassius Severus, returning from hearing him and asked how he had spoken, answered: "badly, and in a bad way."

4. The man beaten by his son in the citadel. Let one who has beaten his father have his hands cut off. A tyrant summoned a father into the citadel with his two sons; he ordered the young men to beat their father. One of them threw himself headlong, the other beat him. Afterwards he was received into the tyrant's friendship. The tyrant being killed, he received the reward. His hands are demanded; the father defends him.

I should be happier if I were defending more defendants. Will you cut off the hands of a tyrannicide? What is this? The tyrant lies whole. It was as necessary to beat the father as to plunder temples, to ravish maidens. O how much we owe to these hands, through which now nothing is necessary! They were such that of them one could despise the tyrant, the other kill him. You threw yourself headlong, my son: this is not to spare your father but yourself. Endure, my son; against the tyrant you must go through your father. Which of my sons do you approve? One killed himself, the other the tyrant. He brought up his hands lightly and held back: the son feigned the blows, the father the groans. Necessity, the great defence of human misfortune: this excuses the Saguntines, though they did not beat their fathers, but killed them. Had it not been so . . . neither would this man have beaten me. The one had left me to my brother, this one to the tyrant. "In the law," he says, "nothing is excepted." But many things, though not excepted, are understood, and the letter of the law is narrow, the interpretation broad. What difference is there between excepting in the law that it be no offence in him who beat his father through madness, when he needs not punishment but a remedy, and that an infant be not punished if he beat his father? He who did this with the tyrant compelling was more wretched than the very man being beaten. She is not unchaste who was summoned by the tyrant; he is not a sacrilegious priest who carried the gifts of the immortal gods with his own hands to the tyrant. He did it at his father's bidding, and this man did not beat, but obeyed. The avenging of a beaten father belongs to none but the father. If I had been beaten by any stranger and were unwilling to bring an action for injury, no one would bring it in my name. As it is, there is no difference; the punishment of the man who beat me is greater, the right of the man who was beaten is the same.

The other side. He beat his father so long as it pleased him to be the tyrant's henchman. "I did it for the commonwealth." You charge the same thing to the commonwealth and to the tyrant. You had something to boast of to the tyrant: your brother chose to die; he perished that he might not commit a parricide, or see one. "Beaten, I remit the punishment." I should wonder, were there not, for so good a father, a son who wished to die. "My father wished it," he says. But my brother did not. "My father wished it," he says. So did you seem worthy of a parricide not only to the tyrant but even to your father? You beat your father, though you knew both the law and your brother.

Outside. From the proconsul Oppius, with whom Sabinus had gone to Crete, the Greeks in the theatre had begun to demand that Sabinus should hold the highest magistracy. Now it is the custom of the Cretans that the magistrate let his beard and hair grow. Sabinus rose, and silence being made by his hand, said: "This magistracy I have held twice at Rome." For twice, as a defendant, he had pleaded his cause. The Greeks did not understand, but, praying well to Caesar, asked that Sabinus might hold that honour a third time too. The same man, when as a defendant he begged to be transferred to the stone-quarries (lautumiae), said: "There is no reason for the very name of the lautumiae to deceive any of you; for that is a thing very far from being elegant (lautum)." He jested amid his own miseries and perils; and who does not know that he ought not to have jested in them — who believes that he could?

5. The stepson carried off from the stepmother by his grandfather. Let there be an action for force. A certain man lost two sons under a stepmother, with doubtful signs of indigestion and of poison. The maternal grandfather, who had not been admitted to visit the sick, carried off the third son. To the father, who was seeking him, he said through a herald that he was with him. He is accused of force.

I had a daughter, fertile, though only one son survives. Let him be reared with me. What do you fear? That you will not be admitted when you come? You do not seek the sons you lost; you seek the one you have not lost. The father reclaims one from me, I two from the father. I have more reason to fear as a grandfather than as a defendant. I came to my sick grandsons; I was not admitted: this was the true force. There is no force which has not arms, a fight, wounds. Describe this man's retinue of tumult: there is one boy and one old man. "You carried off," you say, "my son." Nay, I took up my grandson; nay, I could not shut him out as he came. If I had snatched with an armed band the wife and children of a man besieged by robbers, could my benefit be made a charge? Even physicians bind us, and heal our bodies by force. He cannot deal with me as with a stranger. Nature has her own rights, and this is the difference between a grandfather and a father, that to a grandfather it is permitted to save his own, to a father even to kill. What is this devotion so late, so out of order? You begin to seek your own from the third. Whoever favoured the boy wished that he not be found.

The other side. He did it not to save his grandson, but to defame his wife with poisoning, and me as made over to a poisoner. Between me and my father-in-law, judges, there was no agreement even while my former wife lived; but when she was dead, having declared himself my enemy, while the boy was failing, with outcry and abuse, ill-boding whatever happened, he came, who had never come before to his grandsons when they were well. I did not admit him; for then too I saw he came to carry off the boy.

Outside. Montanus has this fault: he spoils his sayings by repeating them, while, not content to say one thing well once, he brings it about that he has not said it well. For this reason Scaurus used to call Montanus the Ovid among orators; for Ovid too does not know how to leave off what has gone well. When Polyxena had been led to the tomb of Achilles to be sacrificed, Hecuba said: "the very ash of the buried man makes war on this our race." He might have been content; he added: "even from the tomb we have felt the enemy." And not content with this, he added: "for the son of Aeacus I was fruitful." Scaurus used to say that it is no less great a virtue to know how to speak than to know how to leave off.

6. The daughter privy to the poisoning of her stepson. Let a poisoner be tortured until she names her accomplices. A certain man, his wife being dead, by whom he had a son, married another and by her got a daughter. The young man died; the husband accused the stepmother of poisoning. Condemned, while she was being tortured, she named her daughter as accomplice. The girl is demanded for punishment. The father defends her.

It would not profit you, girl, that your brother loved you, had not your mother hated him. The abominable woman, a stepmother even to her daughter, could not even die unless she also killed. Among gladiators too the lot of a victor who fights with a dying man is hard. You may fear no adversary more than one who cannot live, but can kill. Most furious is the frenzy in despair, and in the last death the mind is driven to madness. Some wild beasts bite the very weapons, and rush through their wounds upon the author of their death; the gladiator whom, armed, he had fled, naked he pursues; and men cast down headlong drag with them not only what pushed them, but what meets them. By a certain natural feeling of a mind given over to ruin, it is most pleasing to the dying to die together. O a lie like a poisoning! While she remembers the stepmother, she has forgotten the mother. I ask that, because I avenged my son, I may not lose my daughter. Unless you help me, the stepmother has won, I am conquered. Not even amid her tortures did she cease to kill. Let it profit the girl with you that her father praises her, let it profit her that her mother accuses her. "The daughter," she says, "is an accomplice." I began to be tortured, the stepmother to torture. I had such a son that a stepmother could love him, had she not fallen in with one who could hate even her own daughter. A slave, tortured for theft, named Cato as accomplice. Which do you believe more, the tortures or Cato? Why did the stepmother speak so late, the girl so soon? In this she was paying the penalty for poisoning, that she might exact the price of her accusation.

The other side. The cubs of certain wild beasts are born along with their fury; poisons are deadly at once in their roots. What of the woman who scattered her stepson to delay the father who followed? You have an example that fits both a sister and a maiden. The stepmother gave poison to this stepson, that her daughter alone might be heir; therefore she took an accomplice too.