Book 10

1. The poor man's son following the rich man in mourning. Let there be an action for injury. A certain man who had a son and a rich enemy was found killed and unstripped. The young man, in mourning dress, began to follow the rich man. The rich man brought him to court and demanded that, if he suspected anything, he should bring the charge. The young man said: "I will accuse you when I can." The rich man, seeking offices, was rejected; he accuses the poor man's son of injury. The son speaks against it.

I thank the rich man, that he is now content to make defendants of those he hates. "You shall not walk," he says, "by the same road, you shall not tread in my footsteps, you shall not offer to my delicate eyes a mourning garment, you shall not weep against my will, you shall not keep silent." We would have perished, had this man been a magistrate. That I wore mourning is from grief; that I wept, from filial love; that I did not accuse, from fear; that he was rejected, that is your doing. While my father lived, he never sought offices. My own fault follows me: I keep silent. Would that my father too had had this fault! When have we ever not been in mourning before you? "Accuse," he says, "poor man, the rich." I am not even allowed to walk at my own discretion. "Accuse," he says, "carry the charge through, plead it out." Who can accuse a man who speaks so? "Why," he says, "do you follow me?" Have the poor, then, one road and the rich another? Whatever slayer rushed upon him, like a rich man, despised the spoils. When my father was killed — for I fear that someone may think himself injured if I say "killed." "You are in mourning," he says, "you weep." What else can I do, the son of a murdered poor man? What would he have done to an accuser, who pursues a man who keeps silent? "Why," he says, "do you follow me?" That you may someday pity me, that you may cease to pursue an afflicted house. I have for accuser a man who wonders that he is not a defendant. "Why do you not bring the action?" Because you so little fear it that you compel it. I am in mourning. Is what is permitted a defendant not permitted a mourner? Or shall I not even mourn the man whom I cannot avenge? There was no booty in him that a footpad might desire; there was the highest virtue, an innocence stubborn against the disdain of riches: these were the spoils sought by an enemy. Who contrived the murder, I cannot know; what cannot be concealed, I do know — who wished for it. Both you are a rich enemy, and he was found unstripped: there is no reason why I should accuse, but there is reason why I should suspect.

The other side. That you may know you are stirring up ill-will against me: when I had said, "accuse me," you did not refuse, but answered: "I will accuse you when I can."

2. The brave man not yielding to his brave father. Let there be a reward for a brave man; if there are several, let them contend by a trial. A father and son did a brave deed. The father asked his son to yield to him; the son refused. They contended by a trial; the son defeated his father. With his reward he sets up statues for his father. He is disowned.

What issue of this trial to wish for I do not know, since my crime is to have won. I have the judgement of my country, I have lost that of my father. I saw my father in the line, I fought after his example. Does he call it a trial, that father and son brought our spoils together? I won, not as a son against a father, but as a young man against an old one. I won, but all congratulated my father. I thought of Horatius pushing back the Etruscan lines with his own body; I thought of Decius, who did not yield even to his own father. I was fighting not only for my general, but for my father too. I am greedy of glory: if this is a fault, it is a paternal one. Be ashamed, father, if your son, who is to be disowned, defeated you. I have the reward; you have both the reward and a brave man. Our virtues would have passed by in silence; they were made illustrious when they were compared. They judged not what was, but what they believed you preferred. The honour reached us both: one has the reward, the other received it.

The other side. I do not wish to dwell with my adversary. The same lodging does not hold a conquered man and a brave one. "I have set up statues," he says, "for you." Nay, that I might never be able to forget that I was conquered, you have cut my disgrace in bronze.

3. The madman because he forced his daughter to die. Let there be an action for madness. In the civil war a certain woman followed her husband, though she had her father and brother on the opposite side. When her own party was conquered and her husband killed, she came to her father, by whom she was not received, and said to her father: "How do you wish me to make satisfaction to you?" He answered: "Die." She hanged herself before his door. The father is accused by his son of madness. He speaks against it.

Not even the victor wished satisfaction to be made to him in this way. There was no head on the proscription-list of a woman. You have stained your household gods with your daughter's blood — though why do I speak of the household gods, as though she had perished in the house? Caesar wept over Pompey's head when it was brought to him; and he wept for this man over his daughter. "How do you wish me to make satisfaction to you?" By this very thing the girl ought to have made satisfaction, so dutiful both to her husband and to her father, that she followed the one even to death, and made satisfaction to the other even by death. I offend dangerously a father who knows not how to forgive. "Die." What else had she deserved, if she had refused to make satisfaction? You defended Ligarius, Cicero. How light a charge you judged that, of which you confessed! Before his very threshold she was extinguished, that it might not be doubted whether she had perished for her husband or her father. "She deserved it," he says. Do you accuse her even now? And surely satisfaction has now been made to you. The son-in-law followed the opposite side, the wife her own. The best defence in a civil war is forgetfulness. "Die," he says. Even those who must punish the condemned do not say, "kill," nor "die," but "act according to the law"; they soften the cruelty of the command with a milder word.

The other side. You owe it to your father to approve your character, not to rule his. You must gather many signs of madness; you cannot condemn a father for words. Manlius punished his son, and a victor at that; Brutus punished his children, who were not enemies made, but to be made. See whether, under these examples, a father may not be permitted only to speak more sternly. She asked stubbornly, and in what way she died: I recognized nothing of a daughter, nothing of a conquered woman. She did not send her brother to her father. Or is she even now angry at her brother? Why does she ask me alone, when she ought to make satisfaction to two? "The victor," he says, "was quickly won over." It is easier to forgive war than parricide. Even by her death she sought to stir up ill-will against her father. The woman is said to have perished for her father, who had one man for whom she could die.

4. The maimed beggars. Let there be an action for harming the commonwealth. A certain man reared exposed children and, after maiming them, forced them to beg, so that they might bring him back their earnings. He is accused of harming the commonwealth.

It has come about that fathers neither acknowledge nor take back their children. His cruelty has been a source of revenue, all the more because all of us except him are merciful. It has been brought about that nothing is more wretched for the exposed than to be taken up, for parents than to acknowledge. The shoulder-blades of one, crushed, he beats out into a misshapen hump. Bring forth your household. I wish to know that workshop of human calamities. To each his calamity is assigned as if it were a trade. Look at one with his eyes gouged out, another with his feet broken. Why do you shudder? Thus does this man show mercy. A new monster: the whole man is fed, the maimed feed him. "They would have perished," he says. So do they not survive more unhappily? "They would have perished," he says. Ask the fathers which they would have preferred. How many brave men out of these, how many tyrannicides, how many future priests? Nor do I speak incredible things: out of this fortune the origin of the Roman race appeared. He enters his cruelty as more received than his mercy as expended. The exposed have been reared even by wild beasts, that would have been gentle enough, had they but passed by. Though their prayers are heard everywhere, in their own cause alone they fail. The tongue of one has been cut out, and it is a kind of asking to be unable to ask. Pity all of them, judges, each of whom singly you are wont to pity. Do you think we shall deny vengeance to these men, to whom we did not even deny what they were going to give you? A most unworthy thing: though he is so cruel, he lives by the public mercy. Rise up, wretched ones, and today for the first time ask for yourselves. "Your daily takings," he says, "do not come out right"; it is plain that you do not yet seem wretched enough. Dire omens will meet weddings, funereal auspices the public festivals, and on the days dedicated to mirth these half-living flocks wander about. They feed this man who cannot feed themselves. There is no one who does not know how to beg; he even teaches it. You have not so many limbs as you owe. So then, while you were thinking of the public mercy, could you be so cruel? Wretched those who beg thus, more wretched those who are begged thus! All bring an alms to all, while each man fears to refuse his own son. You have made it a greater evil to be reared than to be exposed. We feared wild beasts and serpents, and the cold hostile to tender limbs, and want too; among the dangers of the exposed we did not count the rearer.

The other side. "You maimed them," he says. Their fathers harmed them more. What of the trainer who forces young men to the sword, and yet is not accused of harming the commonwealth? What of the pimp who forces unwilling women to be defiled, and does not harm the commonwealth? I do not ask that the defendant be praised, but acquitted: let this harm him when he seeks offices; for a man can both not be an honourable man and be an innocent defendant. Though much was taken from them, their life was given back. An action for harming the commonwealth cannot be brought in the name of those who are outside the commonwealth. A needy man, who could feed neither myself, let alone others, I took up these abandoned ones, to whom no injury was done if something was taken from them, but who profited by the benefit if their life was saved. Let them stir up ill-will, let them say that they live so wretchedly through me, provided they confess that they live through me. By the mercy of one they live, by that of all they are fed. It is strange that men have leisure for this thought, to care what a beggar does among beggars. The leading men of this city employ their riches against nature: they have flocks of eunuchs; they cut their grown favourites, that they may be fit for a longer endurance of unchastity, and because they themselves are ashamed to be men, they take care that as few as possible be men. To these delicate and handsome cripples no one comes to aid. You care who carries off infants from the wilderness who would perish unless carried off; you do not care that these rich men cultivate their own solitudes with workhouses of the free-born, and, deceiving the simplicity of the most wretched young men, thrust down into the gladiator-school every one most handsome and most fit for the camp.

5. Parrhasius and Prometheus. Let there be an action for harming the commonwealth. Parrhasius the Athenian painter, when Philip was selling the captive Olynthians, bought one old man; he brought him to Athens, then tortured him; after the model of the tortured man he painted a Prometheus. The Olynthian died under torture. Parrhasius set up the picture in the temple of Minerva. He is accused of harming the commonwealth.

The old man, dragged from his children, stood over the ashes of his burned country: he is sad enough to serve as model for a Prometheus. No one ever sank a man to paint him as shipwrecked. The Olynthian's last entreaty was: give me back to Philip. "He was my slave," he says. You would think it was Philip speaking. We flee the temple of Minerva as though it were the camp of the Macedonians. "He is not sad enough," he says. Is any Olynthian not sad enough? Do you wish, Parrhasius, to see a sad man? Lead him to Olynthus as it lies in ruins. You know well how sad a man you bought. To the Olynthians we opened our city, our temples we shut. No Olynthian would have been tortured, had all the Macedonians bought them. "Let him be tortured" — this not even under Philip. "Let him die" — this not even under Jupiter. So hospitable was this man to the Olynthian. This is to make a Prometheus, not to paint one. "I bought him," he says. Nay, if you are an Athenian, you ransomed him. In this temple we took up vows for the Olynthians. That butcher of Greece nevertheless did no more to this man than sell him. An old man, consumed by the long wasting of his miseries, and as sad as if he had already been tortured. Whomever the auctioneer had seen weeping, he recognized as the buyer. I fear that someone, when he hears of the Olynthian's stripes, tortures, fires, may think I am complaining of Philip. If you believe this man, he imitated an angry Jupiter; if you believe us, he outdid an angry Philip. As much must be suffered with Parrhasius painting as with Jupiter angry. Most wretched old man, perhaps some one of your slaves serves more happily. If you set out to bring aid, I complain that you bought only one; if to torture, I complain that you bought any. On one side stands Parrhasius with his colours, on the other the torturer with his fires: Parrhasius is in doubt between them, whether to paint more eagerly or to rage. The old man is brought forward, looking back at his country; his unhappy face pleased Parrhasius. The Olynthian had something like Prometheus even before the tortures. Fire, tortures, the sword: is this the workshop of a painter or of Philip?

The other side. Never is public repute corrupted by the harm of one man. The opinion of the Athenians is too solid to be shaken by the tortures of a captive. "You harmed the commonwealth," he says, "in that you set up this picture in the temple." They harm the commonwealth who take something from it, not who add to it. Did the priests, then, sin by receiving the picture too? Yet why should they not receive it? The crimes of the gods are painted in temples. Much has always been permitted to the arts: physicians, to learn the unknown force of a disease, have cut open the entrails of men.

6. The thief who accused of treason. A certain man, having accused a rich man of treason, by night pierced through his wall and carried off the chest in which letters sent by the enemy had been placed. The rich man was condemned. When the accuser wished to address the assembly, he was barred by the magistrate; he brings an action for injury.

I carried off only what a thief would have left. I feared nothing more, as a thief, than that the owner might be unwilling to acknowledge the theft. The ruin of one wall held up the falling state of the city. I declare my information: the city is privy to my theft. Is it a theft, when the owner fears to acknowledge it? When the man who lost it suffered punishment, and the man who carried it off a reward? To which would you rather have allowed to speak, if at the same time both the thief and the owner had come? You leaders of a thousand ships, you took Troy by theft. If cities are well overthrown by theft, how much better are they freed by it? I came into the forum, I told of my nocturnal expedition. All had assembled as though for a public meeting. Why do you remove me before the accusation, when not even traitors perish unheard? O the theft, worthy to be told in the assembly! The most vigilant breast of a traitor, ever busy for our destruction, the public destinies had lulled to sleep; sleep had so bound his ministers too, that I was free to choose what I should take. I seemed to myself to be tearing down the walls of the enemy. Do you call it a theft, than which nothing better was done in your year of office? No thief plots against the commonwealth. There is nothing that is not permitted on behalf of the commonwealth.

The other side. What a spectacle that was, you gods! The fortune of the commonwealth had matched together a thief and a traitor. When he saw his theft was useless, he betrayed it, to sell to you what he could sell to no one — so cunning a thief that he could impose even on a traitor. He wishes the bad luck of his theft to seem a plan. The law which bids a nocturnal thief be killed in any manner whatever speaks not only of a condemned man, but of a thief; it hates this vice, and not undeservedly: it is not far from a traitor. He carried off not what he chose, but what the destiny of the public good luck threw in his way. At one and the same time he showed us both a traitor and a thief, who would rather plunder a rich man than condemn him. He broke into the house with stealthy hand; he eluded him. This was not the first time he did it; but he carried off not what he wished, but what he could. By a good precedent the traitor was condemned, by a bad one he was found out.