[175]
When Oppianicus was wandering about as a vagabond and an exile, excluded from every quarter,
he went into the Falernian district of Caius Quintilius; there he first fell sick, and had a
very violent illness. As Sassia was with him, and as she was more intimate with a man of the
name of Statius Albius, a citizen of that colony, a man in good health, who was constantly
with her, than that most dissolute husband could endure, while his fortune was unimpaired, and
as she thought that that chaste and legitimate bond of wedlock was dissolved by the
condemnation of her husband, a man of the name of Nicostratus, a faithful slave of
Oppianicus's, a man who was very curious and very truth-telling, is said to have been
accustomed to carry a good many tales to his master. In the meantime, when Oppianicus was
becoming convalescent, and could not endure any longer the profligacy of this Falernian, and
after he had come nearer the city,—for he had some sort of hired house outside the
gates,—he is said to have fallen from his horse, and, being a man in delicate health
before, to have hurt his side very badly, and having come to the city in a state of fever, to
have died in a few days. This is the manner of his death, O judges, such as to have no
suspicious circumstance at ale attached to it, or if it has any, they must apply to some
domestic wickedness carried on within his own walls.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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