51.
But I, with respect to speeches of that sort, am guided by the authority of many men, and
especially of that most eloquent and most wise man, Lucius Crassus; who—when he was
defending Lucius Plancius, whom Marcus Brutus, a man both vehement and able as a speaker, was
prosecuting; when Brutus, having set two men to read, made them read alternate chapters out of
two speeches of his, entirely contrary to one another, because when he was arguing against
that motion which was introduced against the colony of Narbo, he disparaged the authority of the senate as much as he could, but when
he was urging the adoption of the Servilian law, he extolled the senate with the most
excessive praises; and when he had read out of that oration many things which had been spoken
with some harshness against the Roman knights, in order to inflame the minds of those judges
against Crassus—is said to have been a good deal agitated.
[141]
And so, in making his reply, he first of all explained the difference
between the two times, so that the speech might appear to have arisen from the case and from
its circumstances; after that, in order that Brutus might learn what a man, not only eloquent
but endued with the greatest wit and facetiousness, he had provoked, he himself in his turn
brought up three readers with a book a piece, all which books Marcus Brutus, the father of the
prosecutor, had left, on the civil law. When the first lines of them were read, those which I
take to be known to all of you, “It happened by chance that I and Brutus my son were
in the country near Privernum,” he
asked what had become of his farm at Privernum.
“I and Brutus my son were in the district of Alba.” He begged to know
where his Alban farm was. “Once, when I and
Brutus my son had sat down in the fields near Tibur.” Where was his farm near Tibur? And he said that “Brutus, a wise man, seeing the profligacy of
his son, evidently wished to leave a record behind him of what farms he left him. And if he
could with any decency have written that he had been in the bath with a son of that age, he
would not have passed it over; and still that he preferred inquiring about those baths, not
from the books of his father, but from the registers and the census.” Crassus then
chastised Brutus in this manner, and made him repent of his readings. For perhaps he had been
annoyed at being reproved for those speeches which he had delivered in the affairs of the
republic; in which perhaps deliberate wisdom is more required than in those in court.
[142]
But I am not at all vexed at those things having been
read. For they were not unsuited to the state of the times which then existed, nor to the
cause in which they were spoken. Nor did I take any obligation on myself when I spoke them, to
prevent my defending this cause with honour and freedom. But suppose I were now to confess,
that I had now become acquainted with the real merits of Cluentius's case, but that I was
previously influenced by popular opinion concerning it, who could blame me especially when, O
judges, it is most reasonable that this also should be granted me by you, which I begged at
the beginning, and which I request now, that if you have brought with you into court a
somewhat unfavourable opinion of this cause, you will lay it aside now that you have
thoroughly investigated the case and learnt the whole truth.
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