XXI (A 1,16)
You ask me what has happened about the trial,
the result of which was so contrary to the general
expectation, and at the same time you want to know
how I came to make a worse fight of it than usual.
I will answer the last first. after the manner of
Homer.
1 The fact is that,
so long as I had to defend the authority of the
senate,
2 I
battled with such gallantry and vigour that there
were shouts of applause and crowds round me in the
house ringing with my praise. Nay, if you ever
thought that I showed courage in political
business, you certainly would have admired my
conduct in that cause. For when the culprit had
betaken himself to public meetings, and had made
an invidious use of my name, immortal gods! What
battles! What havoc! What sallies I made upon
Piso, Curio, on the whole of that set! How I fell
upon the old men for their instability, on the
young for their profligacy! Again and again, so
help me heaven! I regretted your absence not only
as the supporter of my policy, but as the
spectator also of my admirable fighting. However,
when Hortensius hit on the idea of a law as to the
sacrilege being proposed by the tribune Fufius, in
which there was no difference from the bill of the
consul except as to the kind of
jurymen—on that point, however, the
whole question turned—and got it carried
by sheer fighting, because he had persuaded
himself and others that he could not get an
acquittal no matter who were the jurymen, I drew
in my sails, seeing the neediness of the jurors,
and gave no evidence beyond what was so notorious
and well attested that I could not omit it.
3 Therefore, if you ask reason
of the acquittal—to return at length to
the former of the two questions —it was
entirely the poverty and low character of the
jury. But that this was possible was entirely the
result of Hortensius's policy. In his alarm lest
Fufius should veto the law which was to be
proposed in virtue of a senatorial decree, he
failed to see that it was better that the culprit
should be left under a cloud of disgrace and
dishonour than that he should be trusted to the
discretion of a weak jury. But in his passionate
resentment he hastened to bring the case into
court, saying that a leaden sword was good enough
to cut his throat. But if you want to know the
history of the trial, with its incredible verdict,
it was such that Hortensius's policy is now blamed
by other people after the event, though I
disapproved of it from the first. When the
rejection of jurors had taken place, amidst loud
cheers and counter-cheers—the accuser
like a strict censor rejecting the most worthless,
the defendant like a kind-hearted trainer of
gladiators all the best—as soon as the
jury had taken their seats, the loyalists at once
began to feel distrust. There never was a seedier
lot round a table in a gambling hell. Senators
under a cloud, equites out at elbows, tribunes who
were not so much made of money as "collectors" of
it, according to their official title.
4 However, there were a few
honest men in the panel, whom he had been unable
to drive off it by rejection, and they took their
seats among their uncongenial comrades with gloomy
looks and signs of emotion, and were keenly
disgusted at having to rub elbows with such
rascals. Hereupon, as question after question was
referred to the panel in the preliminary
proceedings, the severity of the decisions passes
belief: there was no disagreement in
voting, the defendant carried none of his points,
while the accuser got even more than he asked. He
was triumphant. Need I say more? Hortensius would
have it that he was the only one of us who had
seen the truth. There was not a man who did not
think it impossible for him to stand his trial
without being condemned a thousand times over.
Further, when I was produced as a witness, I
suppose you have been told how the shouts of
Clodius's supporters were answered by the jury
rising to their feet to gather round me, and
openly to offer their throats to P. Clodius in my
defence. This seemed to me a greater compliment
than the well-known occasion when your fellow
citizens
5 stopped Xenocrates from taking an oath in
the witness-box, or when, upon the accounts of
Metellus Numidicus
6 being as usual handed
round, a Roman jury refused to look at them. The
compliment paid me, I repeat, was much greater.
Accordingly, as the jurymen were protecting me as
the mainstay of the country, it was by their
voices that the defendant was overwhelmed, and
with him all his advocates suffered a crushing
blow. Next day my house was visited by as great a
throng as that which escorted me home when I laid
down the consulship. Our eminent Areopagites then
exclaimed that they would not come into court
unless a guard was assigned them. The question was
put to the whole panel: there was only one vote
against the need of a guard. The question is
brought before the senate: the decree is passed in
the most solemn and laudatory terms : the jurymen
are complimented: the magistrates are commissioned
to carry it out: no one thought that the fellow
would venture on a defence. "Tell me, ye Muses,
now how first the fire befell !"
7 You know Bald-head, the Nanneian
millionaire,
8 that panegyrist of mine,
whose complimentary oration I have
already mentioned to you in a letter. In two days'
time, by the agency of a single slave, and one,
too, from a school of gladiators, he settled the
whole business—he summoned them to an
interview, made a promise, offered security, paid
money down. Still farther, good heavens, what a
scandal! even favours from certain ladies, and
introductions to young men of rank, were thrown in
as a kind of pourboire to some of the jurors.
Accordingly, with the loyalists holding completely
aloof, with the forum full of slaves, twenty-five
jurors were yet found so courageous that, though
at the risk of their lives, they preferred even
death to producing universal ruin. There were
thirty-one who were more influenced by famine than
fame. On seeing one of these latter Catulus said
to him, "Why did you ask us for a guard? Did you
fear being robbed of the money?" There you have,
as briefly as I could put it, the nature of the
trial and the cause of the acquittal.
Next you want to know the present
state of public affairs and of my own. That
settlement of the Republic—firmly
established by my wisdom, as you thought, as I
thought by God's—which seemed fixed on a
sure foundation by the unanimity of all loyalists
and the influence of my consulship—that
I assure you, unless some God take compassion on
us, has by this one verdict escaped from our
grasp: if "verdict" it is to be called, when
thirty of the most worthless and dissolute fellows
in
Rome
for a paltry sum of money obliterate every
principle of law and justice, and when that which
every man—I had almost said every
animal—knows to have taken place, a
Thalna, a Plautus, and a Spongia, and other scum
of that sort decide not to have taken place.
However, to console you as to the state of the
Republic, rascaldom is not as cheerful and
exultant in its victory as the disloyal hoped
after the infliction of such a wound upon the
Republic. For they fully expected that when
religion, morality, the honour of juries, and the
prestige of the senate had sustained such a
crushing fall, victorious profligacy and lawless
lust would openly exact vengeance from all the best men for the mortification which
the strictness of my consulship had branded in
upon all the worst. And it is once more
I—for I do not feel as if I were
boasting vaingloriously when speaking of myself to
you, especially in a letter not intended to be
read by others—it was I once more, I
say, who revived the fainting spirits of the
loyalists, cheering and encouraging each
personally. Moreover, by my denunciations and
invectives against those corrupt jurors I left
none of the favourers and supporters of that
victory a word to say for themselves. I gave the
consul Piso no rest anywhere, I got him deprived
of
Syria,
which had been already plighted to him, I revived
the fainting spirit of the senate and recalled it
to its former severity. I overwhelmed Clodius in
the senate to his face, both in a set speech, very
weighty and serious, and also in an interchange of
repartees, of which I append a specimen for your
delectation. The rest lose all point and grace
without the excitement of the contest, or, as you
Greeks call it, the
ἀγών. Well, at the meeting of the
senate on the 15th of May, being called on for my
opinion, I spoke at considerable length on the
high interests of the Republic, and brought in the
following passage by a happy inspiration: "Do not,
Fathers, regard yourselves as fallen utterly, do
not faint, because you have received one blow. The
wound is one which I cannot disguise, but which I
yet feel sure should not be regarded with extreme
fear: to fear would show us to be the greatest of
cowards, to ignore it the greatest of fools.
Lentulus was twice acquitted, so was Catiline, a
third such criminal has now been let loose by
jurors upon the Republic. You are mistaken,
Clodius: it is not for the city but for the prison
that the jurors have reserved you, and their
intention was not to retain you in the state, but
to deprive you of the privilege of exile.
Wherefore, Fathers, rouse up all your courage,
hold fast to your high calling. There still
remains in the Republic the old unanimity of the
loyalists: their feelings have been outraged,
their resolution has not been weakened: no fresh
mischief has been done, only what was actually
existing has been discovered. In the trial of one
profligate many like him have been
detected."—But what am I about? I have
copied almost a speech into a letter. I return to
the duel of words. Up gets our dandified young gentleman, and throws in my teeth my
having been at
Baiae. It wasn't true, but what did
that matter to him? "It is as though you were to
say," replied I, "that I had been in disguise!"
"What business," quoth he, "has an Arpinate with
hot baths?" "Say that to your patron," said I,
"who Coveted the watering-place of an Arpinate."
9 For you know about the
marine villa. "How long," said he, "are we to put
up with this king?" "Do you mention a king," quoth
I, "when Rex
10 made no mention of you?"
He, you know, had swallowed the inheritance of Rex
in anticipation. "You have bought a house," says
he. "You would think that he said," quoth I, "you
have bought a jury." "They didn't trust you on
your oath," said he. "Yes," said I, "twenty-five
jurors did trust me, thirty-one didn't trust you,
for they took care to get their money beforehand."
Here he was overpowered by a burst of applause and
broke down without a word to say.
My own position is this: with the
loyalists I hold the same place as when you left
town, with the tagrag and bobtail of the City I
hold a much better one than at your departure. For
it does me no harm that my evidence appears not to
have availed. Envy has been let blood without
causing pain, and even more so from the fact that
all the supporters of that flagitious proceeding
confess that a perfectly notorious fact has been
hushed up by bribing the jury. Besides, the
wretched starveling mob, the blood-sucker of the
treasury, imagines me to be high in the favour of
Magnus—and indeed we have been mutually
united by frequent pleasant intercourse to such an
extent, that our friends the boon companions of
the conspiracy, the young chin-tufts, speak of him
in ordinary conversation as Gnaeus Cicero.
Accordingly, both in the circus and at the
gladiatorial games, I received a remarkable
ovation without a single cat-call. There is at
present a lively anticipation of the elections, in
which, contrary to everybody's wishes, our friend
Magnus is pushing the claims of Aulus's son;
11 and in
that matter his weapons are neither
his prestige nor his popularity, but those by
which Philip said that any fortress could be
taken—if only an ass laden with gold
could make its way up into it. Furthermore, that
precious consul, playing as it were second fiddle
to Pompey,
12 is said to have undertaken the business
and to have bribery agents at his house, which I
don't believe. But two decrees have already passed
the house of an unpopular character, because they
are thought to be directed against the consul on
the demand of Cato and Domitius
13 —one that
search should be allowed in magistrates' houses,
and a second, that all who had bribery agents in
their houses were guilty of treason. The tribune
Lurco also, having entered on his office
irregularly in view of the Aelian law, has been
relieved from the provisions both of the Aelian
and Fufian laws, in order to enable him to propose
his law on bribery, which he promulgated with
correct auspices though a cripple.
14 Accordingly, the
comitia have been postponed to
the 27th of July. There is this novelty in his
bill, that a man who has promised money among the
tribes, but not paid it, is not liable, but, if he
has paid, he is liable for life to pay 3,000
sesterces to each tribe. I remarked that P.
Clodius had obeyed this law by anticipation, for
he was accustomed to promise, and not pay. But
observe! Don't you see that the consulship of
which we thought so much, which Curio used of old
to call an apotheosis, if this Afranius is
elected, will become a mere farce and mockery?
Therefore I think one should play the philosopher,
as you in fact do, and not care a straw for your
consulships !
You say in
your letter that you have decided not to go to
Asia. For
my part I should have preferred your going, and I
fear that there may be some offence
15 given in that matter.
Nevertheless, I am not the man to blame you,
especially considering that I have
not gone to a province myself. I shall be quite
Content with the inscriptions you have placed in
your
16 Amaltheium,
especially as Thyillus has deserted me and Archias
written nothing about me. The latter, I am afraid,
having composed a Greek poem on the Luculli, is
now turning his attention to the Caecilian drama.
17 I have
thanked Antonius on your account, and I have
intrusted the letter to Mallius I have heretofore
written to you more rarely because I had no one to
whom I could trust a letter, and was not sure of
your address. I have puffed you well. If Cincius
should refer any business of yours to me, I will
undertake it. But at present he is more intent on
his own business, in which I am rendering him some
assistance. If you mean to stay any length of time
in one place you may expect frequent letters from
me: but pray send even more yourself. I wish you
would describe your Amaltheium to me, its
decoration and its plan; and send me any poems or
stories you may have about Amaltheia.
18
I should like to make a copy of it at
Arpinum. I will
forward you something of what I have written. At
present there is nothing finished.
