Pro A. Cluentio

There is still one thing which especially perplexes me, and a topic to which I appear to have scarcely made any sufficient reply,—namely, the eulogy which you read, extracted from the will of Caius Egnatius, the father, a most honourable man, and a most wise one; saying that he had disinherited his son, because he had taken a bribe to vote for the condemnation of Oppianicus. Of that man's inconstancy and feebleness I will not say another word. This very will which you are reading is such, that he, when he was disinheriting that son whom he hated, was joining with his other son whom he loved, the most perfect strangers as his coheirs. But I think that you, O Attius, should consider carefully, whether you wish the decision of the censors, or that of Egnatius, to carry most weight with it. If that of Egnatius, that is a trifling thing which the censors have expressed in their notes about the others; for they expelled Egnatius himself from the senate, whom you wish to be considered an authority. If that of the censors is to preponderate, then the censors when they expelled his father, retained this Egnatius in the senate, whom his father disinherited on account of the note which the censors had written respecting him.

Oh, but the whole senate judged that that tribunal had been bribed. How so? It undertook the cause. Could it pass over with indifference a matter of that sort when reported to it? When a tribune of the people, having stirred up the multitude, had almost brought the matter to a trial of strength; when a most virtuous citizen and most innocent man was said to have been unjustly condemned through the influence of money; when the whole body of senators was exceedingly unpopular, was it possible for no edict to be issued? Was it possible for all that excitement of the multitude to be disregarded without extreme danger to the republic? But what was decreed? How justly, how wisely, how diligently was it decreed? “If there are any men by whose agency the public court of justice was corrupted.” Does the senate appear here to decide that any such thing was really done? or rather to be exceedingly angry and indignant if such a thing was done? If Aulus Cluentius himself were asked his opinion about the courts of justice he would express no other sentiments than those which they expressed, by whose sentences you say that Aulus Cluentius was condemned.