[frMed]
[What 1 was the use of bringing forward foreign evidence,] when
his domestic life and his natural disposition was notorious? Therefore, I will not, O Decimus
Laelius, allow you to assume this law and this condition as applicable to yourself and to the
rest for the future, and to us at present; [so as to lay down a rule that we are to accommodate our defences to the will of the prosecutors, and not come to those assertions to which our cause of itself leads us.]
When you have branded his youth, when you have stigmatized the rest of his life with stains
of infamy, when you have brought forward the ruin of his private affairs and his disgrace in
the city, and his vices and crimes in Spain and Gaul and Cilicia, and Crete, in which
provinces he lived in no great obscurity, then we shall hear what the people of Tmolus and the
Lorymeni think of Lucius Flaccus. But the man whom so many and such influential provinces wish
to be saved,—whom many citizens from all parts of Italy defended, being bound to him
by intimate connection and old friendship,—whom this the common country of us all
holds fast in her embrace, on account of her fresh recollection of his great
services,—him, even if all Asia demands him for punishment, I will
defend,—his enemies I will resist. What if it is not all Asia that demands him, nor
the best part of it nor even any part without bribery, nor of its own accord, nor rightly, nor
in a manner according to custom, nor with truth, nor with any conscientious regard to justice
or honesty? If it duly demands him because it has been persuaded, and tampered with, and
excited, and compelled to do so,—if it has backed this prosecution with its name
impiously, and rashly, and covetously, and with great inconsistency, speaking only by the
mouth of the most needy witnesses, and if the province itself has no grounds to complain with
truth of any injuries done by him; still, O judges, will these statements, heard
with reference to a very brief epoch diminish the credit due to actions which we really know,
extending over a long period of time?
I, therefore, as his defender, will preserve this order which his enemy avoids; and I will
pursue and follow up the prosecutor, and of my own accord I will demand the accusation from
our adversary. What is it, O Laelius? Have you at any time been able to stigmatize the youth
of Lucius Flaccus, who has passed his time, not in the shade, nor in the common pursuits and
training of those his age? In truth, even as a boy he went with his father, the consul, to the
wars; and yet, even as to this very fact you accused him of something because [something 2 appeared able to be said so as to excite suspicion.]
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.