11.
But how was it that you were so insane as when Vettius had now summed up his
oration just as you pleased, and had uttered his calumnies against all the
lights of the city, and had descended from the rostra—to call him back on a sudden, and converse
with him in the sight of the Roman people? and then to ask him
whether he could not give the name of any one else? Were you not pressing
upon him to name Caius Piso, my son-in-law; who, at a time when there was a
great abundance of virtuous young men, still has left no one behind him of
equal temperance, and virtue, and piety to himself? and also Marcus
Laterensis, a man who devotes all his days and nights to thinking of glory
and of the republic? Did not you, O you most profligate and abandoned enemy,
propose an investigation into the conduct of so many honourable and
excellent men, and at the same time most honourable rewards for your
informer Vettius? and afterwards, when this conduct of yours was condemned,
not merely by the secret feelings of every one, but by their open
reproaches, did you not strangle that very man Vettius in prison, in order
that there might be no evidence of your having procured his information by
bribery, and that no investigation of that guilt might be instituted so as
to affect you yourself?
[27]
And since you are constantly repeating that you proposed a law to allow each
party to reject judges alternately, in order that every one may see that you
could not contrive even to do right without committing some crime or other,
I ask you whether, after a just law had been proposed at the beginning of
your magistracy, and after you had also proposed several others, you were
waiting till Caius Antonius was prosecuted before Cnaeus Lentulus
Clodianus?1 And after a prosecution was instituted against him,
did you not immediately pass a law against him, “Whoever was
prosecuted after the proposal of your law,” in order that a man of
consular rank—unhappy man!—might be deprived by just
that moment of time, of the benefit and equitable provisions of your law?
[28]
You will say that there was great intimacy
between you and Quintus Maximus. An admirable defence of your guilt! No
doubt it is the greatest praise of Maximus, that after he had adopted the
quarrel against Caius Antonius, and undertaken the prosecution, and after a
president of the court and a bench of judges had been selected, he was
unwilling to allow his adversary a power of striking off judges which would
have been too favourable for him.
* * * Quintus Maximus did nothing inconsistent either with his own virtue, or with the precedents of those most illustrious men, the Paulli, the Maximi, and Africani; whose renown we not only hope will be renewed by this man's virtue, but we actually see that it is so. It is your dishonesty, your guilt, your wickedness, that when you had proposed a law under a pretence of mercy, you put it off till a time when it might serve a purpose of cruelty. And now, indeed, Caius Antonius consoles himself under his misery with this one fact that he had rather be at a distance to hear that the images of his father and his brother, and that his brother's daughter, are placed, not in the house of their family, but in prison, than be at hand to see it.
* * * Quintus Maximus did nothing inconsistent either with his own virtue, or with the precedents of those most illustrious men, the Paulli, the Maximi, and Africani; whose renown we not only hope will be renewed by this man's virtue, but we actually see that it is so. It is your dishonesty, your guilt, your wickedness, that when you had proposed a law under a pretence of mercy, you put it off till a time when it might serve a purpose of cruelty. And now, indeed, Caius Antonius consoles himself under his misery with this one fact that he had rather be at a distance to hear that the images of his father and his brother, and that his brother's daughter, are placed, not in the house of their family, but in prison, than be at hand to see it.
