And that you may understand that Cluentius was not induced to prosecute Oppianicus by a disposition fond of bringing accusations, or by any fondness for display or covetousness of glory, but by nefarious injuries, by daily plots against him, by hazard of his life, which has been every day set before his eyes, I must go back a little further to the very beginning of the business; and I entreat you, O judges, not to be weary or indignant at my doing so—for when you know the beginning, you will much more easily understand the end. Aulus Cluentius Habitus, this man's father, O judges, was a man by far the most distinguished for valour, for reputation and for nobleness of birth, not only of the municipality of Larinum, of which he was a native, but also of all that district and neighbourhood. When he died, in the consulship of Sulla and Pompeius, a. u. c. 666. Twenty-two years before this time. he left this son, a boy fifteen years old, and a daughter grown up and of marriageable age, who a short time after her father's death married Aulus Aurius Melinus, her own cousin, a youth of the fairest possible reputation, as was then supposed, among his countrymen, for honour and nobleness.

This marriage subsisted with all respectability and all concord; when on a sudden there arose the nefarious lust of an abandoned woman, united not only with infamy but even with impiety. For Sassia, the mother of this Habitus, (for she shall be called his mother by me, just for the name's sake, although she behaves towards him with the hatred and cruelty of an enemy,)—she shall, I say, be called his mother; nor will I even so speak of her wickedness and barbarity as to forget the name to which nature entitles her; (for the more lovable and amiable the name of mother is, the more will you think the extraordinary wickedness of that mother, who for these many years has been wishing her son dead, and who wishes it now more than ever, worthy of all possible hatred.) She, then, the mother of Habitus, being charmed in a most impious matter with love for that young man, Melinus, her own son-in-law, at first restrained her desires as she could, but she did not do that long. Presently, she began to get so furious in her insane passion, she began to be so hurried away by her lust, that neither modesty, nor chastity, nor piety, nor the disgrace to her family, nor the opinion of men, nor the indignation of her son, nor the grief of her daughter, could recall her from her desires.