Book 7

1.pr. ON GOOD FORTUNE We have related a good many examples of fortune in its changeable course; of fortune consistently favourable very few can be told. From this it is clear that fortune deals out adversity with a greedy spirit, and prosperity with a sparing hand. Yet this same fortune, when it has bidden itself forget its malice, heaps up not only the greatest and most numerous blessings, but enduring ones as well.

1.1. Let us see, then, by how many steps of benefits fortune, with kindness never failing, led Q. Metellus from the first day of his birth to the very end of his appointed span, up to the highest pinnacle of a blessed life. It willed that he should be born in the city that is foremost in the world; it gave him most noble parents; it added the rarest gifts of mind and bodily strength, so that he might be equal to his labours; it provided him with a wife conspicuous for chastity and fruitfulness; it bestowed on him the distinction of the consulship, the power of a commander, and the splendid display of a most magnificent triumph; it brought it about that at one and the same time he saw three sons of consular rank, one of them also censorian and triumphal, and a fourth of praetorian rank, and that he gave three daughters in marriage and took their offspring to his bosom. So many births, so many cradles, so many manly togas, so many wedding torches, the highest abundance of honours, of commands, of every kind of congratulation; and meanwhile no funeral, no groan, no cause for sorrow. Contemplate the heavens, and yet you will scarcely find there such a state of things, since indeed we see that grief and pain are assigned even to the breasts of the gods by the greatest poets. A fitting end took up this course of his life: for when Metellus had passed through the span of an extreme old age and died by a gentle kind of death, expiring amid the kisses and embraces of his dearest pledges, his sons and sons-in-law carried him through the city on their own shoulders and laid him upon the pyre.

1.2. This good fortune is famous; that other is more obscure, yet set above a divine splendour: for when Gyges, puffed up in spirit by the kingdom of Lydia, abounding in arms and riches, had come to consult Pythian Apollo whether any mortal was happier than himself, the god, sending forth his voice from the hidden recess of the shrine, preferred to him Aglaüs of Psophis. He was the poorest of the Arcadians, but already advanced in years, who had never passed beyond the boundaries of his little field, content with the produce of his tiny farm. Yet Apollo, with the keenness of his oracle, had truly grasped the very end of a blessed life, not merely sketched it. Therefore to Gyges, vaunting insolently of the glitter of his fortune, he replied that he approved more highly the cottage that laughs in security than the palace gloomy with cares and anxieties, and a few clods of earth free from fear than the richest fields of Lydia filled with dread, and one yoke of oxen or two, easily tended, than armies and arms and cavalry burdensome with their devouring expense, and a little granary holding only what is necessary, which no one too greatly covets, than treasures exposed to the plots and desires of all. Thus Gyges, while he longed to have the god as a supporter of his vain opinion, learned where solid and genuine happiness lay.

2.pr. THINGS WISELY SAID OR DONE Now I shall set forth that kind of happiness which lies wholly in the disposition of the mind, and is not sought by prayers, but, born in breasts endowed with wisdom, shines out in prudent words and deeds.

2.1. We have heard that Appius Claudius was often accustomed to say that business was better entrusted to the Roman people than leisure: not because he was ignorant how pleasant the state of tranquillity is, but because he observed that powerful empires are roused by the activity of affairs to the pursuit of virtue, and dissolve into idleness through too much repose. And indeed business, a thing forbidding in name, kept the character of our state in its proper condition, while repose, of soothing title, has stained it with very many vices.

2.2. Scipio Africanus used to say that it was disgraceful in warfare to say "I had not thought it would happen," meaning, of course, that what is carried out by the sword ought to be conducted only after the plan has been explored and thoroughly sifted. With the highest reason: for the error committed to the violence of Mars cannot be corrected. The same man denied that one ought to engage with the enemy in any way other than either when an opportunity offered or when necessity arose. Equally prudently: for to let slip the chance of conducting an affair successfully is the greatest madness, and to refrain from battle once driven into a position where one must fight brings about the ruin of a pestilent cowardice; and of those who do such things, the one does not know how to use the kindness of fortune, the other how to resist its injury.

2.3. Weighty too, and indeed profound, was the opinion of Q. Metellus in the senate, who, when Carthage had been conquered, declared that he did not know whether that victory had brought more good or more harm to the state, since, just as he had been of service by restoring peace, so by removing Hannibal he had done some harm: for it was by Hannibal's crossing into Italy that the now sleeping valour of the Roman people had been roused, and one ought to fear lest, freed from a keen rival, it should slip back into the same slumber. Therefore he set on an even balance the burning of houses, the laying waste of fields, the draining of the treasury, and the blunting of the sinews of our ancient strength.

2.4. How wise was that deed of the consular L. Fimbria! Appointed judge for M. Lutatius Pinthias, a distinguished Roman knight, in a matter of a wager which the latter had made with his adversary on the ground that he was a good man, he never would conclude that trial by his pronouncement, lest either, if he gave judgment against him, he should rob an approved man of his reputation, or he should swear that a man was good when that matter was bound up with countless praises.

2.5. This wisdom was displayed in civil affairs, that other in military service. The consul Papirius Cursor, when, besieging Aquilonia, he wished to join battle, and the keeper of the sacred chickens reported to him a most excellent omen though the birds were not feeding favourably, being made aware of his deceit, believed indeed that a good omen had been given to himself and his army, and went into the fight; but he placed the liar before the very battle line, so that the gods might have someone by whose death they could expiate whatever anger they had conceived. And it was directed, whether by chance or even by the providence of the heavenly power, that the first weapon hurled from the opposite side struck the chicken-keeper himself in the breast and laid him low, lifeless. When the consul learned this, with confident spirit he both attacked Aquilonia and took it. So quickly did he perceive how the wrong done to the commander ought to be avenged, how the violated religious duty ought to be expiated, by what means the victory could be grasped. He played the part of a stern man, a religious consul, an energetic commander, sweeping up by one impulse of his mind the measure of fear, the kind of punishment, and the path of hope.

2.6. Now I shall pass on to the acts of the senate. When it was sending the consuls Claudius Nero and Livius Salinator against Hannibal, and saw that they, though equal in virtues, were yet most bitterly at variance with each other in their enmities, it reconciled them with the greatest zeal, lest because of their private dissensions they should administer the state too unprofitably; for unless concord is present in the command of the consuls, a greater desire arises of obstructing another's work than of producing one's own. But where an obstinate hatred also intervenes, each sets out as a surer enemy of the other than both are of the opposing camp. The same men, when on account of a censorship conducted too harshly they were brought to trial before the rostra by Cn. Baebius, tribune of the plebs, the senate freed from pleading their cause by its own decree, restoring to that office free from all fear of judgment a man who ought to demand an account, not render one. Equal was that wisdom of the senate. Ti. Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, who had dared to promulgate an agrarian law, it punished with death. The same senate decreed admirably that, in accordance with his law, land should be distributed to the people man by man through three commissioners, since indeed it thereby removed at one and the same time both the author and the cause of a most serious sedition. How prudently then it conducted itself in the matter of king Masinissa! For when it had made use of his most ready and most faithful service against the Carthaginians, and perceived that he was too greedy in enlarging his kingdom, it ordered a law to be passed which would grant to Masinissa a liberty released from the authority of the Roman people. By doing this it both retained the goodwill of one who had deserved excellently of it, and also drove from its own doors the savagery of Mauretania and Numidia and the other peoples of that region, never resting in a faithful peace.

2e.1. Time would fail one relating our domestic examples, since our empire has achieved its growth and its protection not so much by the strength of bodies as by the vigour of minds. Let Roman prudence therefore, for the greater part, be laid up in silent admiration, and let entrance be given to examples of this kind from foreign peoples. Socrates, the earthly oracle, as it were, of human wisdom, thought that nothing more ought to be asked of the immortal gods than that they should grant good things, because they alone knew what was useful for each man, whereas we for the most part desired in our prayers that which it would have been better not to obtain. For indeed, mind of mortals wrapped in the thickest darkness, over how wide a field of error you scatter your blind petitions! You crave riches, which have been the ruin of many; you covet honours, which have brought down a good many; you turn kingdoms over in your mind, whose ends are often seen to be pitiable; you lay hands on splendid marriages; but these, just as sometimes they bring distinction, so sometimes they utterly overthrow households. Cease, therefore, foolish soul, to gape after the future causes of your own evils as though they were the happiest of things, and commit yourself wholly to the judgment of the heavenly powers, since those who are wont to bestow good things readily can also choose them most fittingly. The same Socrates used to say that they reached glory by an easy and short road who took care that, whatever they wished to seem, that they should also be. By this saying he plainly advised that men should drink in virtue itself rather than pursue its shadow. The same man, being consulted by a certain young man whether he should take a wife or abstain altogether from marriage, replied that whichever of the two he did, he would repent of it. "On the one side," he said, "loneliness, childlessness, the dying-out of your line, an alien heir will await you; on the other, perpetual anxiety, a continuous web of complaints, the reproach of the dowry, the heavy frown of in-laws, a mother-in-law's chattering tongue, a lier-in-wait for another's marriage, the uncertain outcome of children." He did not allow the young man, amid a series of hard things, to make a choice as though of joyful material. The same man, when the criminal madness of the Athenians had passed a grim sentence upon his life, and with brave spirit and steadfast countenance he had received the cup of poison from the executioner's hand, the goblet now brought to his lips, while his wife Xanthippe amid weeping and lamentation cried out that he was perishing innocent, said, "What then? Did you think it better for me to die guilty?" That immense wisdom, which could not forget itself even in the very departure from life!

2e.2. Come, how prudently did Solon judge that no one ought to be called happy while he still lived, because right up to the last day of our fate we are subject to a doubtful fortune. The funeral pyre, then, completes the title of human happiness, for it sets itself against the onset of evils. The same man, when he saw one of his friends grieving heavily, led him up onto the citadel and urged him to cast his eyes around over all the parts of the buildings lying below. When he observed that this had been done, "Now think to yourself," he said, "how many griefs both have been beneath these roofs of old, and are passing today, and will dwell in them in ages to come; and cease to bewail the misfortunes of mortals as though they were your own." By this consolation he showed that cities are pitiable enclosures of human calamities. The same man used to say that, if all men had brought together their evils into one place, it would come to pass that they would prefer to carry their own home again rather than bear off their share from the common heap of miseries. From this he concluded that we ought not to judge the things we suffer by chance to be of an exceptional and unbearable bitterness.

2e.3. Bias, moreover, when enemies had invaded his native city of Priene, and all whom only the savagery of war had allowed to depart unharmed were fleeing laden with the weight of precious things, being asked why he carried off nothing of his own goods with him, said, "But I carry all my goods with me": for he bore them in his breast, not on his shoulders, things to be seen not with the eyes but appraised by the mind. These, shut up in the dwelling-place of the mind, can be shaken loose by the hands neither of mortals nor of gods, and as they are at hand to those who remain, so they do not desert those who flee.

2e.4. Concise too in Plato's words, but prevailing in sense, is that opinion of his who declared that the world would at last be happy when either the wise had begun to reign or kings to be wise.

2e.5. There was also that king of subtle judgment, who, they say, when the diadem had been handed to him, before he placed it on his head, held it back and considered it long, and said, "O cloth more noble than happy! which, if anyone knew thoroughly with how many anxieties and dangers and miseries it is stuffed, he would not be willing even to pick it up as it lay on the ground."

2e.6. How praiseworthy was the answer of Xenocrates! When he was present in the deepest silence at the slanderous conversation of certain men, and one of them asked why he alone held his tongue in check, he said, "Because I have sometimes repented of having spoken, of having kept silent never."

2e.7. Of a deeper prudence too is the precept of Aristophanes, who in a comedy brought on Pericles, sent back from the dead, prophesying . . . that one ought not to rear a lion in the city, but, if it had been reared, it was fitting to comply with it: for he advises that young men of especially high birth and excited temperament should be reined in, but that, once they had been fed with too much favour and lavish indulgence, they should not be hindered from obtaining power, because it is foolish and useless to belittle those strengths which one has oneself fostered.

2e.8. Wonderfully too spoke Thales: for being asked whether the deeds of men escaped the gods, he said, "Not even their thoughts," so that we should wish to have not only our hands but also our minds pure, since we believe that the heavenly power is present at our secret thoughts.

2e.9. Nor indeed is what follows any less wise. A father, consulting Themistocles about his only daughter, asked whether he should give her in marriage to a poor but accomplished man, or to a rich but little approved one. He said to him, "I prefer a man in want of money to money in want of a man." By this saying he advised the foolish man to choose for a son-in-law a man rather than riches for the man.

2e.10. Come, how commendable was the letter of Philip, in which he thus rebuked Alexander for having tried to draw to himself the goodwill of certain Macedonians by largesse: "What reasoning, my son, led you into so empty a hope as to think that those men would be faithful to you whom you had driven to love of you by money?" That came from affection in the father, from experience in Philip, who was for the greater part a trader of Greece rather than a conqueror of it.

2e.11. Aristotle, moreover, when he was sending his pupil Callisthenes to Alexander, advised him to speak with him either as seldom or as agreeably as possible, so that, of course, he might either be safer through silence in the king's hearing or more acceptable through his speech. But Callisthenes, while he rebuked Alexander for rejoicing in the Persian form of salutation, a Macedonian as he was, and kindly persisted in recalling him, against his will, to Macedonian customs, was ordered to be deprived of breath, and felt a late repentance for the wholesome counsel he had neglected. The same Aristotle used to declare that one ought to speak of oneself in neither direction, since to praise oneself is the mark of a vain man, to blame oneself of a foolish one. His too is that most useful precept, that we should consider pleasures as they depart. By showing them thus indeed he diminished them: for he sets them before our minds when they are weary and full of repentance, so that they may be sought again less eagerly.

2e.12. And not without prudence did Anaxagoras, when someone asked him who, then, was happy, say, "No one of those whom you consider fortunate, but you will find that man in the number of those whom you believe to be made up of the wretched. He will not be one abounding in riches and honours, but the faithful and persistent cultivator either of a small farm or of an unambitious learning, happier in his retirement than in his outward show."

2e.13. Wise too was the saying of Demades: for when the Athenians were unwilling to decree divine honours to Alexander, he said, "Take care lest, while you guard the heaven, you lose the earth."

2e.14. How subtly, moreover, did Anacharsis compare laws to the webs of spiders! For as those webs hold back the weaker creatures but let the stronger pass through, so by these laws the lowly and the poor are bound fast, but the rich and the powerful are not held.

2e.15. Nothing too was wiser than the deed of Agesilaus, since indeed, when he had learned by night of a conspiracy that had arisen against the state of the Lacedaemonians, he at once abrogated the laws of Lycurgus, which forbade punishment to be inflicted on the uncondemned; but when the guilty had been seized and put to death, he immediately restored them, and provided at the same time for both things: that the wholesome punishment should be neither unjust nor lawfully hindered. And so, in order that the laws might always be able to exist, they for a while did not exist.

2e.16. But I do not know whether the counsel of Hanno was not of the most outstanding prudence: for when Mago was announcing to the senate of the Carthaginians the outcome of the battle of Cannae, and, as proof of so great a success, was pouring out golden rings filling the measure of three pecks, which had been stripped from our slaughtered citizens, Hanno asked whether any of the allies, after so great a disaster, had revolted from the Romans; and when he heard that no one had gone over to Hannibal, he urged that envoys should at once be sent to Rome, through whom terms of peace might be discussed. And if his opinion had prevailed, Carthage would neither have been defeated in the second Punic war nor destroyed in the third.

2e.17. Not even the Samnites paid small penalties for a like error, in that they had neglected the wholesome counsel of Herennius Pontius. He, surpassing the rest in authority and prudence, being consulted by the army and by its leader his own son as to what ought to be done about the Roman legions shut up at the Caudine Forks, replied that they should be sent away unharmed. Being asked on the next day about the same matter, he said they ought to be destroyed, so that either the gratitude of the enemy might be earned by the greatest benefit, or their strength broken by a most grievous loss. But the improvident rashness of the victors, while it scorned both sides of expediency, by sending them under the yoke kindled them to its own destruction.

2e.18. To many and great examples of wisdom I shall add a very small one. The Cretans, when they wish to use a most bitter curse against those whom they vehemently hate, pray that they may take delight in a bad habit, and by this modest kind of vow they find a most effective outcome of vengeance: for to desire something uselessly and to dwell on it persistently—that neighbouring sweetness is near to ruin.

3.pr. THINGS CRAFTILY SAID OR DONE There is another kind of deeds and sayings which has slipped by a slight deviation from wisdom into the name of craftiness, and which, unless it has taken on strength from deceit, does not find the end of its purpose, and seeks praise by a hidden path rather than by an open road.

3.1. In the reign of Servius Tullius, a cow of remarkable size and outstanding form was born to a certain head of a household in the Sabine country. The most reliable authorities of the oracles replied that it had been produced by the immortal gods for this purpose: that whoever should sacrifice it to Diana on the Aventine, his country should obtain the empire of the whole world. Glad at this, the owner drove the cow to Rome with the greatest haste and set it before the altar of Diana on the Aventine, intending by his sacrifice to give the Sabines the rule of the human race. The priest of the temple, informed of this matter, brought a scruple of religion upon his guest, that he should not slay the victim before he had washed himself in the water of the nearby river; and while the man made for the channel of the Tiber, the priest himself sacrificed the cow, and by a pious theft of the sacrifice restored to our city the lordship over so many states and so many peoples.

3.2. In this class of acuteness Junius Brutus must be reckoned among the first: for when he observed that all the flower of the nobility was being plucked out by the king Tarquinius, his uncle, and that among the rest his own brother too had been killed, because he was of a more vigorous wit, he pretended that he was of a dull mind, and by this deceit concealed his very great virtues. Setting out also for Delphi with the sons of Tarquinius, whom the king had sent to honour Pythian Apollo with gifts and sacrifices, he brought gold to the god under the name of an offering, secretly enclosed in a hollowed-out staff, because he feared that it might not be safe for him to venerate the heavenly power with open liberality. Then, when their father's commissions had been carried out, the young men consulted Apollo as to which of them seemed likely to reign at Rome. He replied that the supreme power of our city would lie with him who should first give his mother a kiss. Then Brutus, as though he had slipped by chance, deliberately threw himself down and, thinking the earth to be the common mother of all, kissed it. That kiss so craftily pressed upon Tellus granted liberty to the city, and to Brutus the first place in the annals.

3.3. The elder Scipio too embraced the protection of cunning: for when, making for Africa from Sicily, he wished to fill up the number of three hundred horsemen from the bravest Roman foot-soldiers, and could not so suddenly equip them, since the shortness of time forbade it, he achieved his end by the shrewdness of a plan: for of those young men, the noblest and richest, whom he had with him throughout all Sicily but unarmed, he ordered three hundred to make ready as quickly as possible splendid arms and chosen horses, as though he were going to carry them off at once with him to the assault of Carthage. When they, with troubled minds, had obeyed the order, prompt indeed but in view of the long and dangerous war, Scipio proclaimed that he would remit that expedition for them, if they would consent to hand over their arms and horses to his soldiers. The unwarlike and timid youth snatched at the condition and eagerly yielded their equipment to our men. Thus the cunning of the general provided that . . . by what was demanded at once, the fear of military service, first welcome and then removed, should become the greatest benefit.

3.4. What follows must be related. Q. Fabius Labeo, appointed by the senate as arbiter for fixing the boundaries between the people of Nola and of Naples, when he had come to the place itself, advised both parties separately to lay aside their greed and prefer to draw back rather than to advance in the dispute. And when each party, moved by the man's authority, had done this, a certain amount of empty land was left in the middle. Then, when the boundaries had been fixed as they themselves had marked them out, he adjudged whatever was left of the soil to the Roman people. But although the men of Nola and of Naples, circumvented, could complain of nothing—since the verdict had been given according to their own demonstration—nevertheless by a dishonest kind of trickery a new revenue accrued to our state. They say that the same man, when by a treaty struck with king Antiochus, whom he had overcome in war, he ought to receive half the number of his ships, cut them all in two through the middle, so as to deprive him of his whole fleet.

3.5. For we must forgive the gibe of M. Antonius, who used to say that he had written out no speech for this reason: that if anything done in an earlier trial should be likely to harm the man he was afterwards going to defend, he might be able to affirm that it had not been said by him; for he had a tolerable excuse for a scarcely decent deed: for on behalf of those whose lives were in peril he was prepared not only to use his own eloquence, but even to abuse his own sense of shame.

3.6. Sertorius, having experienced the indulgence of nature equal to the strength of his body and the wisdom of his mind, forced by the Sullan proscription to become leader of the Lusitanians, when he could not bend them by a speech from their wish to engage with the Romans in a full battle line, led them by a crafty plan to his own opinion: for he set up in their sight two horses, one most strong, the other most feeble, and then ordered the tail of the strong one to be plucked little by little by a weak old man, and the tail of the feeble one to be torn off all at once by a young man of remarkable strength. The order was obeyed. But while the young man's right hand wearied itself with fruitless labour, the hand worn out with age accomplished its task. Then, to the barbarian assembly that was eager to learn to what this matter tended, he suggested that our army was like a horse's tail, of which someone attacking the parts might overwhelm them, while one attempting to lay low the whole would hand over victory more quickly than he could seize it. So the barbarian people, rough and hard to rule, rushing to its own destruction, perceived with its eyes the advantage which it had rejected with its ears.

3.7. Fabius Maximus, moreover, for whom not to fight was to conquer, when he had in his camp a foot-soldier of the people of Nola, a man of outstanding bravery but suspected of doubtful loyalty, and a Lucanian horseman of energetic service who was perishing for love of a harlot, in order that he might rather use both as good soldiers than punish both, dissembled his suspicion in the case of the one, and in the case of the other bent military discipline a little from its straight course: for by praising the former fully before his tribunal and honouring him with every kind of distinction, he compelled his mind to be recalled from the Carthaginians to the Romans, and by allowing the latter to ransom his mistress secretly, he rendered him a most ready skirmisher on our behalf.

3.8. I shall come now to those by whom safety was sought through cunning. M. Volusius, plebeian aedile, when he had been proscribed, taking on the dress of a priest of Isis, begging alms along the roads and public highways, did not allow those he met to discern who he really was, and, hidden by this kind of deceit, made his way into the camp of M. Brutus. What is more wretched than that necessity, which bade a magistrate of the Roman people, with the purple-bordered toga of his honour cast off, walk through the city disguised in the insignia of a foreign religion! O men too desirous, these of their own life, those of another's death, who either themselves endured such things or compelled others to suffer them!

3.9. Somewhat more splendid was the help that Sentius Saturninus Vetulo gave himself in the same kind of extreme fortune. He, when he had heard that his name had been posted among the proscribed by the triumvirs, at once seized the insignia of a praetorship, and with men suborned to go before him in the manner of lictors and attendants and public slaves, commandeered vehicles, took over lodgings, cleared those he met from his path, and by so bold a usurpation of office spread, in the broadest daylight, the thickest darkness over the eyes of his enemies. The same man, when he came to Puteoli, just as though he were performing a public service, with the greatest license seized ships and made his way into Sicily, which was then the surest refuge of the proscribed.

3.10. With one example of lighter note added to these, I shall return to foreign matters. A certain man, most loving of his son, when he wished to restrain him, inflamed with forbidden and dangerous passions, from his insane desire, tempered his fatherly indulgence with wholesome counsel: for he asked that, before he went to the woman he loved, he should make use of common and permitted love. The young man, complying with his prayers, the impulse of his unhappy spirit being loosened by the satiety of licensed intercourse, and bringing himself slower and more sluggish to what was not permitted, gradually laid the passion aside.

3e.1. When Alexander, king of the Macedonians, warned by lot to order the man who should first meet him as he went out of the gate to be killed, had commanded an ass-driver who happened to come in his way before all others to be hurried off to death, and the man asked why he was condemning him, who deserved nothing and was innocent, to capital punishment, and Alexander to excuse his act referred to the command of the oracle, the ass-driver said, "If it is so, O king, the lot has destined another for this death: for the little ass, which I was driving before me, met you first." Alexander, delighted both at so clever a saying and because he himself had been recalled from his error, snatched at the opportunity of expiating the religious obligation in an animal of considerably less worth. The highest gentleness in this king, in the groom of the other king cunning.

3e.2. When the realm was oppressed by the foul domination of the Magi, Darius, having taken to himself six helpers of the same rank, made a pact with the partners of his glorious work that, mounted on horses, at sunrise they should direct their course to a certain place, and that he should obtain the kingdom whose horse should first neigh there. But while his rivals, men of the greatest reward, awaited the kindness of fortune, he alone obtained the prosperous accomplishment of the wished-for thing by the shrewdness of his groom Oebares, who, having put his hand on the mare's genitals, when they had come to that place, brought it to the nostrils of the horse. Excited by that scent, the horse neighed before all the rest; and on hearing it the remaining six candidates for the supreme power at once slipped from their horses and, as is the custom of the Persians, with their bodies stretched on the ground saluted Darius as king. How great an empire was intercepted by how small a trick!

3e.3. Bias, moreover, whose wisdom is longer-lived among men than his native Priene was—since the latter even now breathes, while of the former only traces survive as of one extinguished—used to say that men ought so to conduct themselves in the practice of friendship that they should remember that it could be turned into the gravest enmities. This precept indeed might at first sight seem perhaps too cunning and hostile to that simplicity in which intimacy especially delights; but if a deeper consideration be brought to bear, it will be found exceedingly useful.

3e.4. The safety of the city of Lampsacus, indeed, rested on the benefit of a single trick: for when Alexander was being carried towards its destruction with the greatest zeal, and had seen his teacher Anaximenes advanced beyond the walls, because it was clear that he would oppose his prayers to his anger, he swore that he would not do what Anaximenes asked. Then Anaximenes said, "I ask that you destroy Lampsacus." This swiftness of shrewdness rescued from the destruction to which it was destined a town renowned for its ancient nobility.

3e.5. By the cunning of Demosthenes too a certain little old woman was wonderfully helped, who had received money on deposit from two strangers on this condition: that she should return it to both of them together. One of them, after some time had passed, as though his comrade were dead, covered with squalor, carried off all the coins of the deceived woman. Then the other came up and began to demand the deposit. The wretched woman was at a loss, and, in the greatest want both of money and of defence alike, was now thinking of a noose and hanging: but opportunely Demosthenes shone upon her as her advocate. When he came into the case, he said, "The woman is prepared to discharge her obligation of the deposit; but unless you bring your partner, she cannot do it, since, as you yourself proclaim, this was the agreement, that the money should not be paid out to one without the other."

3e.6. Nor indeed was that done with little prudence. A certain man at Athens, hateful to the whole people, about to plead his case on a capital charge before them, suddenly began to seek the highest office, not because he hoped he could attain it, but so that men might have somewhere to pour out the onrush of their anger, which is usually most keen. Nor did this so cunning reasoning of his plan deceive him: for, vexed at the elections by hostile shouting and the frequent hisses of the whole assembly, and stung also by the mark of an office denied him, a little later, in a peril of his life, he found the most merciful votes of that same people. But if he had exposed himself to the danger of his head while they still thirsted for vengeance, their ears, barred by hatred, would have admitted no part of his defence.

3e.7. Like this trick was that cunning of . . . Hannibal. Defeated by the consul Duilius in a naval battle, and fearing to pay the penalty for the lost fleet, he wonderfully averted the displeasure by a stratagem: for, before the news of the disaster could reach home, after that unlucky battle he sent a certain one of his friends, prepared and instructed, to Carthage. When this man had entered the senate-house of that city, he said, "Hannibal consults you: since the Roman commander has arrived bringing great maritime forces with him, ought he to engage with him?" The whole senate cried out that there was no doubt that he ought. Then the man said, "He has engaged, and has been defeated." Thus he left them no freedom to condemn the act which they themselves had judged ought to be done.

3e.8. Likewise Hannibal, when Fabius Maximus was mocking the unconquered force of his arms by most wholesome delays of battle, in order to sprinkle him with some suspicion of dragging out the war, while laying waste the fields of all Italy with fire and sword, left his estate alone, immune from this kind of injury. The insidious sketch of so great a benefit would have accomplished something, had not both Fabius's loyalty and Hannibal's crafty character been most well known to the Roman city.

3e.9. To the people of Tusculum too safety was gained by the acuteness of their counsel: for when by their frequent rebellions they had deserved that the Romans should wish to overthrow their city from its foundations, and Furius Camillus, a most distinguished general furnished with a most powerful army, had come to carry this out, they all came to meet him in their togas and most kindly furnished supplies and the other offices of peace. They even allowed him to enter the walls in arms, with neither face nor dress changed. By this steadfastness of tranquillity they penetrated not only to the right of our friendship, but even to the partnership of citizenship—using, by Hercules, a shrewd simplicity, since they had understood that it was more fitting to dissemble fear by services than to protect themselves by arms.

3e.10. But execrable was the counsel of Tullus, leader of the Volsci. He, inflamed with the greatest desire to make war on the Romans, when he observed that the spirits of his men were bruised by several adverse battles and on that account more inclined to peace, drove them where he wished by an insidious device: for when a great multitude of the Volsci had assembled at Rome for the sake of watching the games, he told the consuls that he greatly feared lest they should suddenly set in motion something hostile, and warned them to be more cautious, and immediately himself went out of the city. The consuls reported this matter to the senate. The senate, although no suspicion underlay it, nevertheless, moved by the authority of Tullus, decreed that the Volsci should depart before nightfall. Irritated by this insult, they could easily be impelled to rebel. Thus the lie of the crafty leader, wrapped in a pretence of goodwill, deceived two peoples at once: the Roman, so as to brand the innocent; the Volscian, so as to make them angry at being deceived.

4.pr. STRATAGEMS But there is that outstanding part of cunning, far removed from all reproach, whose works, because by . . . a name they can scarcely be aptly expressed, are called, in Greek pronunciation, "stratagems."

4.1. Tullus Hostilius, having attacked Fidenae with all his military forces—which, the cradle of our rising empire, did not allow to grow torpid through their frequent rebellions, and taught his valour, fed by neighbouring trophies and triumphs, to push his hopes further—Mettius Fufetius, leader of the Albans, suddenly disclosed in the very battle line the loyalty of his alliance, always doubtful and suspect: for, deserting the flank of the Roman army, he settled on a nearby hill, to be a watcher of the battle instead of a helper, so that he might either insult the conquered or attack the wearied conquerors. There was no doubt that this matter would weaken the spirits of our soldiers, since at one and the same time they saw the enemy engaging and their auxiliaries failing. And so Tullus provided that this should not happen: for, urging on his horse, he ran through all the knots of fighting men, proclaiming that Mettius had withdrawn by his command, and that, when he himself had given the signal, he would attack the rear of the Fidenates. By this device of a commander's art he changed fear into confidence, and instead of trembling filled the breasts of his men with eagerness.

4.2. And, not to depart at once from our kings, Sextus Tarquinius, son of Tarquinius, taking it ill that Gabii could not be stormed by his father's strength, devised a plan stronger than arms, by which he might intercept that town and add it to the Roman empire: for he suddenly betook himself to the Gabini, as though fleeing the cruelty of his parent and the lashes which he had endured of his own will; and little by little, by alluring the goodwill of every individual with feigned and contrived flatteries, when he had obtained the greatest influence among them all, he sent a friend of his to his father to indicate how he held all things in his own hand, and to ask what he wished to be done. To the young man's cunning the old man's craft replied: for Tarquinius, exceedingly delighted with the matter, but trusting too little to the loyalty of the messenger, made no reply, but, leading the man aside into the garden, knocked off with his staff the largest and tallest heads of the poppies. The young man, on learning at once both his father's silence and his deed, perceived the meaning of the one and the proof of the other, and did not fail to grasp that he was being instructed to remove every most eminent man of the Gabini either by exile or by death. Therefore he handed over to him the state, stripped of its good defenders, with its hands all but bound.

4.3. That too was provided by our ancestors both prudently in counsel and happily in outcome: for when the city had been taken and the Gauls were besieging the Capitol, and perceived that the only hope of taking it lay in the famine of its defenders, the Romans, using an exceedingly clever kind of counsel, robbed the conquerors of the one incitement to perseverance: for they began to throw down loaves of bread from several places. Astonished at this spectacle, and believing that an unlimited abundance of grain remained over for our men, the Gauls were driven to a compact to abandon the siege. Then truly Jupiter pitied Roman valour, which was borrowing its protection from cunning, when he saw provisions thrown away amid the greatest scarcity of supplies. And so to a crafty and likewise dangerous plan he gave a wholesome outcome.

4.4. And the same Jupiter afterwards breathed favourably upon the shrewd counsels of our most excellent generals: for when Hannibal was tearing at one side of Italy and Hasdrubal had invaded the other, in order that the joined forces of the two brothers might not press our affairs, already wearied, with an unbearable weight at once, the vigorous counsel of Claudius Nero on the one hand, and the famed foresight of Livius Salinator on the other, brought it to pass: for Nero, having pinned Hannibal down in Lucania, falsely representing his own presence to the enemy, since the strategy of the war so required it, hastened with marvellous speed over a long road to bring help to his colleague. Salinator, about to fight on the next day in Umbria by the river Metaurus, with the greatest dissimulation received Nero into his camp by night: for he ordered tribunes to be taken in by tribunes, centurions by centurions, horsemen by horsemen, foot-soldiers by foot-soldiers, and without any commotion, on ground that could scarcely hold one army, inserted the other. Thereby it came about that Hasdrubal did not know he was going to fight against two consuls until he was laid low by the valour of both. Thus that Punic cunning, infamous throughout the whole world, baffled by Roman prudence, handed over Hannibal to be deceived by Nero, and Hasdrubal by Salinator.

4.5. Memorable too for his counsel was Q. Metellus. He, when as proconsul he was waging war in Spain against the Celtiberians, and could not storm by strength the city of Contrebia, the capital of that people, after turning plans over within his breast much and long, found a way by which he might bring his purpose to fulfilment. He would set out on marches with great impetus, then make for one region after another: he would besiege these mountains, and a little later cross over to those, while meanwhile the cause of his unexpected and sudden vacillation was unknown both to all his own men and to the enemy themselves. Being asked too by a certain man most friendly to him why he was following so scattered and uncertain a kind of warfare, he said, "Cease to ask that: for if I perceive that even the inner tunic of mine is privy to this plan, I shall order it to be burned at once." To what end, then, did that dissimulation break out, or what end did it have? When in truth he had entangled both his own army in ignorance and all Celtiberia in error, having directed his course elsewhere, he suddenly turned back to Contrebia and overwhelmed it, unexpected and stunned. Therefore, unless he had compelled his mind to search out deceptions, he would have had to sit in arms before the walls of Contrebia into his extreme old age.

4e.1. Agathocles, moreover, king of Syracuse, was boldly cunning: for when the Carthaginians had occupied the greater part of his city, he carried his army over into Africa, in order to scatter fear by fear, force by force—and not without effect: for, struck by his sudden arrival, the Carthaginians gladly purchased their own safety by the safety of the enemy, and made a compact that at one and the same time Africa should be freed from Sicilian arms and Sicily from Punic. Come now—if he had persisted in guarding the walls of Syracuse? Sicily would have been pressed by the evils of war, and he would have left the goods of peace to be enjoyed by a secure Carthage. As it was, by inflicting what he was suffering, while he assailed another's resources rather than guarded his own, the more readily he abandoned his kingdom, the more safely he recovered it.

4e.2. What of Hannibal? Did he not, before he came down to fight, bind the Roman battle line at Cannae with several snares of cunning and lead it to so pitiable an end? For above all he provided that it should have both the sun and the dust, which is usually raised there in quantity by the wind, against it. Then he ordered part of his forces, during the very time of the battle, to flee deliberately, and when a Roman legion, cut off from the rest of the army, followed it, he saw to it that it was butchered by those whom he had placed in ambush. Finally he suborned four hundred horsemen, who, with feigned desertion, made for the consul, and being ordered by him to lay down their arms in the manner of deserters and withdraw to the rearmost part of the battle, with the swords which they had hidden between their tunics and breastplates drawn, cut the hamstrings of the fighting Romans. This was Punic bravery, equipped with deceits and ambushes and treachery. And this is now the surest excuse for our circumvented valour, since we were deceived rather than conquered.

5.pr. ON ELECTORAL DEFEATS The condition of the Campus Martius, here set before us, will usefully equip the man entering on the path of ambition to bear more bravely the not very prosperous outcomes of elections; for, with the defeats of the most distinguished men set before their eyes, they will seek honours, just as with no less hope, so with more prudent judgment of mind, and will remember that it is no sacrilege for something to be denied to one man by all, since often individuals have judged it lawful to resist the wishes of all; knowing also that what could not be obtained by favour ought to be sought by patience.

5.1. Q. Aelius Tubero, when Q. Fabius Maximus was giving a feast to the people in the name of his uncle P. Africanus, being asked to spread the dining-couch, covered Punic couches with goat-skins and, instead of silver vessels, set out Samian ware. The unseemliness of this thing so offended men that, though otherwise he was held to be an excellent man, and as a candidate for the praetorship had come down into the Campus relying on his grandfather L. Paulus and his uncle P. Africanus, he went off from there beaten, marked with disgrace: for as in private life they always approved frugality, so in public life the greatest care was taken for splendour. And so the city, believing that not the company of a single banquet, but it itself in its entirety had reclined on those little skins, avenged the shame of the feast with its votes.

5.2. But P. Scipio Nasica, the most distinguished light of toga-clad power—who as consul declared war on Jugurtha, who received with most holy hands the Idaean Mother as she journeyed from her Phrygian seat to our altars and hearths, who by the strength of his authority suppressed many and pestilent seditions, in whom as their leader the senate gloried for several years—when as a young man he was seeking the curule aedileship and had grasped, in the manner of candidates, somewhat too tightly the hand of a certain man hardened by rustic work, asked him for a joke whether he was accustomed to walk on his hands. This saying, taken up by the bystanders, flowed out to the people and brought Scipio the cause of his defeat: for all the rustic tribes, judging that their poverty had been cast in their teeth by him, unsheathed their anger against his insulting wit. Therefore our state, by recalling the talents of noble young men from insolence, made of them great and useful citizens, and by not allowing honours to be sought from buffoons, added the due weight of authority.

5.3. No such error was observed in L. Aemilius Paulus, but nevertheless several times he sought the consulship in vain; and the same man, when he had already wearied the Campus with his defeats, was made consul twice and censor, and obtained also the highest step of dignity. His virtue defeats did not break, but sharpened, since indeed the very mark of disgrace, kindling his desire for the highest honour, brought it more ardent to the elections, so that he conquered by persistence the people whom he had not been able to move by the splendour of his nobility and the goods of his mind.

5.4. Q. Caecilius Metellus a few and mournful friends led home, afflicted by the defeat of his consulship, full of sorrow and shame. The same man, triumphing over Pseudophilippus, the whole senate, joyful and eager, escorted to the Capitol. The greater part of the Achaean war too, to which L. Mummius put the finishing touch, was beaten down by this man. Could the people then deny the consulship to one to whom it was soon either going to give or going to owe two most distinguished provinces, Achaea and Macedonia? And indeed by this deed it had the better citizen of him: for he understood how industriously the consulship ought to be conducted by him which he had perceived to be obtained with so great labour.

5.5. What was so excellent, what so opulent as L. Sulla? He lavished riches and commands, abrogated old laws, brought in new ones. He too, in that Campus of which he afterwards became master, was bruised by the defeat of the praetorship—who would have obtained all the offices he sought, if only some god had set before the Roman people the form and image of his future power.

5.6. But, to relate the greatest crime of the elections, M. Porcius Cato, who was going to add more distinction to the praetorship by his own character than he was going to gain from the splendour of its purple-bordered toga, could not at one time obtain it from the people. Votes next door to madness, which indeed paid heavy enough penalties for their error, since they were forced to give to Vatinius the honour which they had denied to Cato. Therefore, if we wish to estimate truly, it was not the praetorship that was then denied to Cato, but Cato that was denied to the praetorship.

6.pr. ON NECESSITY The most bitter laws and most savage commands of an abominable necessity have forced both our city and also foreign peoples to endure many things grievous not only in the understanding but even in the hearing.

6.1. For, the Roman military youth being drained by several adverse battles in the second Punic war, the senate, on the proposal of the consul Ti. Gracchus, decreed that slaves should be bought at public expense for the purpose of repelling the enemy; and when, concerning this matter, a bill had been brought before the people by the tribunes of the plebs, three commissioners were created, who procured twenty-four thousand slaves and, having bound them by an oath that they would give energetic and brave service as long as the Carthaginians were in Italy, sent them under arms to the camp. From Apulia too and from the Paedicli, two hundred and seventy were bought to fill up the cavalry. How great is the violence of a bitter mischance! The state which up to that time had disdained to have as soldiers even men of free birth registered among the lowest class—this same state added to its army bodies dragged out of slaves' cells and slaves gathered from shepherds' huts, as though they were its chief support. Sometimes, then, a noble spirit yields to expediency and succumbs to the strength of fortune, where, unless you choose the safer counsels, you must perish following the showy ones. The disaster of Cannae, moreover, so vehemently confounded our city that, while M. Junius Pera as dictator administered the state, the spoils of the enemy fastened to the temples of the gods, consecrated to their divine power, were torn down to serve as instruments of war, boys still wearing the purple-bordered toga put on arms, and even six thousand of those bound over for debt and condemned on capital charges were enrolled. These measures, if they be regarded in themselves, may carry some shame; but if they be weighed with the strength of necessity brought to bear, they may seem protections suited to the savagery of the time. On account of the same disaster, when Otacilius, who held Sicily, and Cornelius Mammula, who held Sardinia, as propraetors, complained that the allies were furnishing neither pay nor grain for their fleets and armies, affirming even that they had not the means whence to furnish it, the senate wrote back that the treasury was not sufficient for distant expenses: accordingly, they should themselves see by what means so great a want should be relieved. By this letter what else did the senate do but cast from its own hands the helm of its empire, and dismiss in a few words Sicily and Sardinia—the most generous nurses of our city, the steps and supports of its wars, reduced into its power with so much sweat and blood—at your bidding, Necessity, of course?

6.2. The same Necessity made the men of Casilinum, shut up by the siege of Hannibal and failing in the supply of provisions, willing to chew thongs drawn off for the necessary uses of bindings, and hides stripped from their shields and softened in boiling water. What was more wretched than they, if you regard the bitterness of their lot; what more loyal, if you look to their steadfastness? They who, lest they should revolt from the Romans, endured such a kind of food, while they gazed upon their own richest fields and most fertile plains lying beneath their walls. And so Casilinum, situated nearby—famed for the valour of . . . —struck with the pledge of its persevering friendship the impious eyes of the Campanian city, which in its greed had fostered Punic ferocity with its delights.

6.3. In that siege, while three hundred men of Praeneste persisted in their loyalty, it came to pass that one of them preferred to sell a captured mouse for two hundred denarii rather than to consume it himself for the soothing of his hunger. But, I believe, the providence of the gods assigned to both seller and buyer the end that each of them deserved: for the greedy man, consumed by famine, was not allowed to enjoy the gains of his meanness, while the man of even temper lived on the food procured dearly indeed, but out of necessity, for a wholesome outlay.

6.4. But when C. Marius and Cn. Carbo were consuls, at variance in civil war with L. Sulla—at which time not victory for the state was being sought, but the state itself was the prize of victory—by a decree of the senate the golden and silver ornaments of the temples were melted down, lest pay should be lacking to the soldiers: for it was a worthy cause indeed—whether this side or that should glut its cruelty by the proscription of citizens—that the immortal gods should be despoiled! Not, then, the will of the conscript fathers, but the savage hand of a most foul necessity pressed its pen upon that decree.

6.5. The army of the deified Julius, that is, the unconquered right hand of an unconquered leader, when it had shut up Munda by arms and material was lacking for building a rampart, raised to the height it required a heap of enemy corpses, and palisaded it, since oaken stakes were lacking, with light javelins and pikes, using necessity as the instructress of a new kind of contrivance.

6.6. And, to join a mention of the divine son to the heavenly remembrance of the father: when Phraates, king of the Parthians, seemed about to pour himself into our provinces, and the regions neighbouring his empire were shaken by the proclamation of a suddenly declared alarm, so great a scarcity of provisions came upon the region of the Bosporus that for six thousand denarii single vessels of oil and the same number of pecks of grain were exchanged for an equal number of slaves. But the care of Augustus, then at leisure for the guardianship of the lands, dispelled this most bitter tempest.

6e.1. To the Cretans no such protection shone forth, who, driven by the siege of Metellus to the utmost want, tortured—I should more justly say than sustained—their thirst with the urine of themselves and their beasts of burden, because, while they feared to be conquered, they suffered that which not even a conqueror would have forced them to suffer.

6e.2. The Numantines, moreover, surrounded by Scipio with palisade and rampart, when they had consumed all that could prolong their hunger, in the end made use of the banquets of human bodies. Wherefore, when the city had now been taken, several were found carrying in their bosoms limbs and members of butchered bodies. There is no excuse of necessity in these men: for those to whom it was permitted to die had no need to live thus.

6e.3. This savage obstinacy of theirs in a like crime the execrable impiety of the men of Calagurris surpassed. They, in order that, the more persistently, they might keep faith with the ashes of the slain Sertorius by frustrating the siege of Cn. Pompeius—because no other living creature now remained in their city—turned their wives and children to the use of a wicked banquet; and that their armed youth might the longer nourish their own vitals with their own vitals, they did not hesitate to salt the unhappy remains of the corpses. Behold the kind of men one might exhort in the battle line to fight bravely for the safety of their wives and children! From this enemy, surely, punishment was to be sought by so great a leader rather than victory, because to have avenged them could bring more glory than to have conquered them, since they surpassed every kind of serpent and wild beast in comparison with themselves in the title of ferocity: for those pledges of life which to such creatures are dearer than their own breath became to the men of Calagurris their luncheons and dinners.

7.pr. ON WILLS THAT WERE ANNULLED Let us now be at leisure for a business which belongs to a man's affairs of especial care and of his last hour, and let us consider which wills, though lawfully made, were rescinded, or which, though they could deservedly be rescinded, remained valid, or which transferred the honour of an inheritance to others than those who expected it; and let me set these forth in the order in which I have proposed them.

7.1. The father of a certain soldier, having received from the camp a false report of his son's death, died after appointing other heirs. Then, his service completed, the young man made for home: by his father's error and the shamelessness of strangers he found it closed against him. For what could be more shameless than they? He had spent the flower of his youth for the state, had endured the greatest labours and very many dangers, showed the scars received on the front of his body—and they demanded to possess his ancestral household gods, themselves idle burdens to the city! And so, laying aside his arms, he was forced to enter in the Forum a toga-clad campaign: a bitter one—for with most wicked heirs he contended before the Hundred Men over his father's goods; and he came off superior not only in all their counsels but even in their votes.

7.2. Likewise the son of M. Anneius of Carseoli, a most distinguished Roman knight, adopted by his uncle Sufenas, rescinded before the Hundred Men the will of his natural father, in which he had been passed over, although in it Tullianus, a friend of Pompey the Great, had been written as heir, with Pompey himself indeed as one of the witnesses. And so in the trial he had more business with the favour of a most excellent man than with the ashes of his parent. But although both these things strove against him, nevertheless he obtained his father's goods: for L. Sextilius and P. Popilius, whom M. Anneius, joined to himself by blood, had made heirs in the same portion as Tullianus, did not dare to contend at law with the young man, although by the eminent strength of Magnus at that time they might have been invited to defend the tablets of the will; and it helped the heirs somewhat that M. Anneius had passed over into the family and sacred rites of Sufenas. But the closest bond of procreation among men overcame at once the father's will and the authority of the foremost man of the state.

7.3. C. Tettius, moreover, disinherited by his father in infancy, born of his mother Petronia, whom Tettius had kept in marriage as long as he lived, the deified Augustus, using the spirit of a father of his country, ordered by his decree to enter upon his father's goods, since Tettius, with the greatest injustice, had revoked the name of father from a son begotten in his own home.

7.4. Septicia too, the mother of the Trachali of Ariminum, angry at her sons, in order to insult them, when she could now no longer bear children, married a very old man, Publicius, passing over both her sons also in her will. Approached by them, the deified Augustus disapproved both the woman's marriage and her last dispositions: for he ordered the sons to have their mother's inheritance, but forbade the husband to keep the dowry, because the union had not been entered upon for the sake of begetting children. If Equity herself were to take cognizance of this matter, could she have pronounced more justly or more weightily? You scorn those whom you bore; you marry, worn out; with violent spirit you confound the order of your will, nor do you blush to make over your whole patrimony to one beneath whose laid-out corpse you have spread your withered old age. Therefore, while you so conduct yourself, you have been blasted by a heavenly thunderbolt even down to the shades below.

7.5. Distinguished too was the ruling of C. Calpurnius Piso, praetor of the city: for when Terentius laid before him a complaint that, out of eight sons whom he had brought up to manhood, by one given in adoption he had been disinherited, he gave him possession of the young man's goods and did not allow the heirs to proceed at law. Surely the majesty of fatherhood moved Piso, the gift of life, the benefit of upbringing; but it also bent him somewhat that the number of children standing around—because he saw the seven brothers impiously disinherited together with their father.

7.6. What of the weighty decree of Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus, the consul! A certain Genucius, a Gallus of the Great Mother, had obtained from Cn. Orestes, praetor of the city, that he should be ordered restored to the goods of Naevius Anius, possession of which he had received from him according to the tablets of the will. Mamercus, appealed to by Surdinus, whose freedman had made Genucius his heir, annulled the praetorian jurisdiction, because he said that Genucius, having of his own accord cut off the genital parts of his own body, ought to be reckoned in the number neither of men nor of women. A decree fitting for Mamercus, fitting for the foremost man of the senate, by which it was provided that the tribunals of the magistrates should not be polluted by the obscene presence and defiled voice of Genucius under the pretext of a right claimed.

7.7. Q. Metellus played the part of a city praetor much sterner than Orestes had played. He did not give to the pimp Vecillus, seeking the possession of the goods of Vibienus according to the tablets of the will, because, a most noble and most weighty man, he judged that the condition of the Forum and of the brothel must be kept separate, and was unwilling either to approve the act of the one, who had cast his fortunes into a contaminated stable, or to render to the other, as to a citizen of unimpaired standing, his rights, since he had cut himself off from every honourable kind of life.

8.pr. WILLS THAT REMAINED VALID THOUGH THEY HAD CAUSES WHY THEY COULD BE RESCINDED Content with these examples of rescinded wills, let us touch on those which remained valid, though they had causes on account of which they could be rescinded.

8.1. How certain, how even notorious was the madness of Tuditanus! Inasmuch as he scattered coins among the people, and was seen, to the great laughter of men, trailing his toga in the Forum like a tragic garment, and did many things consistent with these. By his will he appointed . . . as heir, which Ti. Longus, his nearest in blood, tried in vain to overthrow by the judgment of the spear-court: for the Hundred Men thought it must be considered rather what was written in the tablets than who had written them.

8.2. The life of Tuditanus was mad; but the tablets of the will of Aebutia, who had been the wife of L. Menenius Agrippa, were full of frenzy: for, though she had two daughters of equally similar uprightness, Pletonia and Afronia, carried away rather by the inclination of her own mind than moved by any injuries or services of the other, she appointed Pletonia alone as heir; to the sons of Afronia too she left, out of a very ample patrimony, twenty pieces of money. Afronia nevertheless was unwilling to contend at law with her sister, and judged it better to honour her mother's will by submission than to overturn it by a lawsuit, showing herself the more undeserving of the injury the more even-temperedly she bore it.

8.3. Less to be wondered at was the womanish error which Q. Metellus committed: for though very many and most famous men of the same name were flourishing in our city, and the family of the Claudii too, with which he was connected by the closest bond of blood, was in its prime, he left Carrinas as his sole heir; nor on this account did anyone attack his will.

8.4. Likewise Pompeius Reginus, a man of the transalpine region, when he had been passed over in his brother's will, and, to convict it of injustice, had recited in the assembly-place, before a very great gathering of both orders, two tablets of his own wills inscribed in marble, in which the brother had for the most part been written as heir, and there was bequeathed to him by way of legacy fifteen million sesterces, after complaining much and long among friends who agreed with his indignation, as far as concerned the judgment of the spear-court, allowed his brother's ashes to rest in peace. And there had been appointed by him as heirs men neither equal to Reginus in blood nor near to him, but strangers and lowly, so that not only the disgraceful silence but even the insulting preference might seem visible.

8.5. WILLS WHICH HAD HEIRS CONTRARY TO MEN'S EXPECTATIONS Of equally fortunate impunity, but, I do not know whether, of a fouler offence, are these wills. Q. Caecilius, who by the most ready zeal and greatest generosity of L. Lucullus had attained both an honourable step of dignity and a most ample patrimony, when he had always carried it openly before him that that one man alone was his heir, and dying had even handed him his rings, adopted Pomponius Atticus by his will and left him heir of all his goods. But the corpse of the deceitful and treacherous man the Roman people, a rope thrown around its neck, dragged through the streets. And so the wicked fellow had indeed the son and heir he wished, but the funeral and obsequies he deserved.

8.6. Nor was T. Marius of Urbinum worthy of others, who, raised from the lowest rank of military service by the benefits of the deified emperor Augustus to the highest honours of the camp, and made wealthy by their most abundant profits, not only at all other times of his life proclaimed that he would leave his fortunes to him from whom he had received them, but even on the day before he died said this very thing to Augustus himself, while meanwhile he did not even add his name to the tablets of his will.

8.7. L. Valerius, moreover, whose surname was Heptachordus, having found Cornelius Balbus a toga-clad enemy—inasmuch as he had been harassed by his work and counsel in several private suits and at last, with an accuser suborned, accused on a capital charge—passing over his advocates and patrons, left Balbus alone as heir. Doubtless a certain bewilderment turned his mind awry: for he loved his own squalor and cherished his dangers and sought condemnation in his prayers, pursuing the author of these things with goodwill, and those who would ward them off with hatred.

8.8. T. Barrus handed his rings, as though to a sole heir, on his death-bed to Lentulus Spinther, whose most loving spirit and most generous friendship he had felt, though he was in no part leaving him heir. How great a punishment did conscience, in that moment of time—if only it possesses the strength it is believed to have—exact from a most foul man! For amid the very thought of his deceitful and ungrateful fault he gave up the breath, as though some torturer were racking his mind within, because he perceived that his passage from life to death would be both hateful to the gods above and detestable to those below.

8.9. M. Popilius, moreover, of senatorial rank, on his death looked back with kindly countenance, in accordance with the ancient law of friendship, upon Oppius Gallus, most intimate with him from his earliest years, and addressed him with words bearing before them a great affection, and even, of the many who sat by, judged him alone worthy of a last embrace and kiss, and besides handed him his rings too—that, of course, he might lose nothing of that inheritance which he was not going to enter upon. These rings Oppius, a careful man, but recognizing them as the mockery, full of insult, of a dying friend, placed in a little casket and, after they had been sealed by those present, most carefully restored to his heirs, himself disinherited. What is more dishonourable than this jest, or what more untimely? A senator of the Roman people, gone forth from the senate-house, a man about presently to lack the enjoyments of life, with his eyes pressed shut in death and his breath giving up its last gasps, chose for himself, by a buffoon's sport, things that should bring him reproach.