Pro A. Cluentio

You have said that an injury was done by the family of my client to Cnaeus Decius, a Samnite; him I mean who was proscribed, in his calamity. He was never treated by any one more liberally than by Cluentius. It was the riches of Cluentius that relieved him in his distresses; and he himself, and all his friends and relations, know it well. You have said “that his stewards offered violence to and assaulted the shepherds of Ancarius and Pacenus.” When some dispute (as is often the case) had arisen in the hills between the shepherds, the stewards of Habitus defended the property and private possessions of their master. The parties expostulated with one another, the cause was proved to the satisfaction of the others, and the matter was settled without any trial or any recourse to law.

You have said, “when a relation of Publius Aelius had been disinherited by his will, this man, who was no relation of his, was declared his heir.” Publius Aelius acted so from his knowledge of Habitus's merit. He was not present at the making of the will, and that will was signed by Oppianicus as a witness. You have said, “that he refused to pay Florius a legacy bequeathed to him in the will.” That is not the case; but as thirty sesterces had been written instead of three hundred, and as it did not appear to him to have been very carefully worded, he only wished him to consider what he received as due to his liberality. He first denied that the money was legally due, but, having done so, he then paid it without any dispute. You have said, “that the wife of a certain Samnite named Caelius was, after the war, recovered from Cluentius.” He had bought the woman as a slave from the brokers; but the moment that he heard that she was a free woman he restored her to Caelius without any action.

You have said, “that there is a man named Ennius, whose property Habitus is in possession of.” This Ennius is a needy man, a bumper-up of false accusations, a hired tool of Oppianicus; who for many years remained quiet; then at last he accused a slave of Habitus of theft; lately, he began to claim things from Habitus himself. By that private proceeding, he will not (believe me), though we may perhaps be his advocates, escape calumny. And also, as it is reported to us, you suborn an entertainer of many guests, a certain Aulus Binnius, an innkeeper on the Latin road, to say that violence was offered to him in his own tavern by Aulus Cluentius and his slaves. But about that man I have no need at present to say anything. If he invited them, as is commonly the case, we will treat the man so as to make him sorry for having gone out of his way.

You have now, O judges, everything which the prosecutors, after eight years' meditation, have been able to collect against the morals of Aulus Cluentius during his whole life, the man whom they state to be so hated and unpopular. Charges how insignificant in their kind! how false in their facts! how briefly replied to! Learn now this, which has a reference to your oath, which belongs to your tribunal, which is a burden the law has imposed on you, in accordance with which you have assembled here,—the law, I mean, about accusations of poison; so that all may understand in how few words this cause may be summed up, and how many things have been said by me which had a great deal to do with the inclination of my client, but very little with your decision.

It has been urged in the case for the prosecution, that Caius Vibius Capax was taken off by poison by this Aulus Cluentius. It happens very seasonably that a man is present, endowed with the greatest good faith, and with every virtue, Lucius Plaetorius, a senator, who was connected by ties of hospitality with, and was an intimate friend of that man Capax. He used to live with him at Rome; it was in his house that he was taken in, in his house that he died. “But Cluentius is his heir.” I say that he died without a will, and that the possession of his property was given by the praetor's edict to this man, his sister's son, a most virtuous young man, and one held in the highest esteem for honourable conduct, Numerius Cluentius, who is present in court.

There is another poisoning charge. They say that poison was, by the contrivance of Habitus, prepared for this young Oppianicus, when, according to the custom of the citizens of Larinum, a large party was dining at his wedding feast; that, as it was being administered in mead, a man of the name of Balbutius, his intimate friend, intercepted it on its way, drank it, and died immediately. If I were to deal with this charge as one that required to be refuted, I should treat those matters at great length, which, as it is, my speech will pass over in a few words.

What has Habitus ever done that he is not to be thought a man incapable of such an atrocity as this? And what reason had he for being so exceedingly afraid of Oppianicus, when he could not possibly say a word in this case, and while accusers could not possibly be wanting, as long as his mother was alive? which you will soon have proved to you. Was it his object to have no sort of danger wanting to his cause, that this new crime was added to it? But what opportunity had he of giving him poison on that day, and in so large a company? Moreover, by whom was it given? Whence was it got? How, too, was the cup allowed to be intercepted? Why was not another given to him over again? There are many arguments which may be urged; but I still not appear to wish to urge them, and still not to do so. For the facts of the case shall speak for themselves.

I say that that young man, whom you say died the moment that he had drank that cup, did not die at all on that day. O great and impudent lie! Now see the rest of the truth. I say that he, having come to the dinner while labouring under an indigestion, and still, as people of that age often do, had not spared himself, was taken ill, continued ill some days, and so died. Who is my witness for this fact? The man who is a witness also of his own grief—his own father. The father, I say, of the young man himself: he, who, from his grief of mind, would have been easily inclined by even the slightest suspicion to appear as a witness against Aulus Cluentius, gives evidence in his favour. Read his evidence. But do you, unless it is too grievous for you, rise for a moment, and endure the pain which this necessary recollection of your trouble causes you; on which I will not dwell too long, since, as became a virtuous citizen, you have not allowed your own grief to be the cause of distress or of a false accusation to an innocent man. [The testimony of Balbutius the father is read.]

There is one charge remaining, O judges; a charge of such a nature, that you may see from it the truth of what I said at the beginning of my speech,—that whatever misfortune has happened to Aulus Cluentius of late years, whatever anxiety or trouble he has at the present time, has all been contrived by his mother. You say that Oppianicus was killed by poison, which was administered to him in bread by some one of the name of Marcus Asellius, an intimate friend of his own; and that that was done by the contrivance of Habitus. Now, in this matter, I ask first of all what reason Habitus had for wishing to kill Oppianicus. For I admit that ill-will did exist between them; but men only wish their enemies to be slain, either because they fear them, or because they hate them.

Now, by fear of what could Habitus have been influenced, that he should have endeavoured to commit so great a crime? What reason could any one have had for fearing Oppianicus, already condemned to punishment for his crimes, and banished from the city? What did Cluentius fear? Did he fear being attacked by a ruined man? or being accused by a convict? or being injured by the evidence of an exile? But if, because Habitus hated him, he, on that account, did not wish him to live, was he such a fool, as to think that a life which he was then living, the existence of a convict, of an exile, of a man abandoned by every one? whom, on account of his odious disposition, no one was willing to admit into his house, or to visit, or to speak to, or even to look at?

Did Habitus, then, envy the life of this men? If he had hated him bitterly and utterly, ought he not to have wished him to live as long as possible? Would an enemy have hastened his death, when death was the only refuge which he had left from his calamity? If the man had had any virtue or any courage, he would have killed himself, (as many brave men have done in many instances, when in similar misfortunes.) How is it possible for an enemy to have wished to offer to him what he must himself have wished for eagerly For now indeed, what evil has death brought him? Unless, perchance, we are influenced by fables and nonsense, to think that he is enduring in the shades below the punishments of' the wicked, and that he has met with more enemies there than he left behind here; and that he has been driven headlong into the district and habitation of wicked spirits by the avenging furies of his mother-in-law, of his wife, of his brother, and of his children. But if these stories are false, as all men are well aware that they are, what else has death taken from him except the sense of his misery? Come now, by whose instrumentality was the poison administered? By that of Marcus Asellius.

What connection had he with Habitus? None—nay rather, as he was a very intimate friend of Oppianicus, he was rather an enemy to Habitus. Did he then pick out that man whom he knew to be rather unfriendly to himself, and to be exceedingly intimate with Oppianicus, to be above all others the instrument of his own wickedness, and of the other's danger, In the next place, why do you, who have been prompted by pity to undertake this prosecution, leave this Asellius so long unpunished? Why did not you follow the precedent of Habitus, and have a previous examination, which should affect him, by means of an investigation into his conduct who had administered the poison?

But now, as for that circumstance of poison being administered in bread, how improbable, how unusual, how strange a thing it is. Was it easier than administering it in a cup? Could it be hid more secretly in some part of the bread than if it had been all liquefied and amalgamated with a potion? Could it pass more rapidly into the veins and into every separate part of the body if it were eaten than if it were drunk? Could it escape notice (if that was thought of) more easily in bread, than in a cup, when it might then have been so mixed up as to be wholly impossible to be separated?

“But he died by a sudden death.” But if that was the case, still that circumstance, from the number of men who die in that way, would not give rise to any well-grounded suspicion of poison. If it were a suspicious circumstance, still the suspicion would apply to others rather than to Habitus. But as to that fact itself, men tell most impudent lies. And that you may see this, listen to this statement of the truth respecting his death, and how after his death an accusation was sought for out of it against Habitus, by his mother.

When Oppianicus was wandering about as a vagabond and an exile, excluded from every quarter, he went into the Falernian district of Caius Quintilius; there he first fell sick, and had a very violent illness. As Sassia was with him, and as she was more intimate with a man of the name of Statius Albius, a citizen of that colony, a man in good health, who was constantly with her, than that most dissolute husband could endure, while his fortune was unimpaired, and as she thought that that chaste and legitimate bond of wedlock was dissolved by the condemnation of her husband, a man of the name of Nicostratus, a faithful slave of Oppianicus's, a man who was very curious and very truth-telling, is said to have been accustomed to carry a good many tales to his master. In the meantime, when Oppianicus was becoming convalescent, and could not endure any longer the profligacy of this Falernian, and after he had come nearer the city,—for he had some sort of hired house outside the gates,—he is said to have fallen from his horse, and, being a man in delicate health before, to have hurt his side very badly, and having come to the city in a state of fever, to have died in a few days. This is the manner of his death, O judges, such as to have no suspicious circumstance at ale attached to it, or if it has any, they must apply to some domestic wickedness carried on within his own walls.

After his death Sassia, that abandoned woman, immediately began to devise plots against her son. She determined to have an investigation made into the death of her husband. She bought of Aulus Rupilius, whom Habitus had employed as his physician, a slave of the name of Strato, as if she were following the example of Habitus in purchasing Diogenes. She said that she was going to investigate the conduct of this Strato, and of some servant of her own. Besides that, she begged of that young Oppianicus that slave Nicostratus, whom she thought to be too talkative, and too faithful to his master, for judicial examination. As Oppianicus was at that time quite a boy, and as that investigation was being instituted about the death of his own father, although he thought that that slave was a well-wisher both to himself and to his father, still he did not venture to refuse anything. The friends and connections of Oppianicus, and many also of the friends of Sassia herself, honourable men, and accomplished in every sense of the word, are invited to attend. The investigation is carried on by means of the severest tortures. When the minds of the slaves had been tried both with hope and fear, to induce them to say something in the examination, still, compelled (as I imagine) by the authority of those who were present, and by the power of the tortures, they adhered to the truth, and said that they knew nothing of the matter.

The examination was adjourned on that day, by the advice of the friends who were present. After a sufficient interval of time, they are summoned a second time. The examination is repeated all over again. No degree of the most terrible torture is emitted. The witnesses who had been summoned turned away, and could scarcely bear to witness it. The cruel and barbarous woman began to storm, and to be furious that her plans were not proceeding as she had hoped that they would. When the torturer and the very tortures themselves were worn out, and still she would not desist, one of the men who had been summoned as witnesses, a man distinguished by honours conferred on him by the people, and endued with the highest virtue, said that he plainly saw that the object was not to find out the truth, but to compel them to give some false evidence. After the rest had shown their approbation of these words, it was resolved by the unanimous opinion of them all, that the examination had been carried far enough.

Nicostratus is restored to Oppianicus; Sassia goes to Larinum with her friends, grieving, because she thought that her son would certainly be safe; since not only no true accusation could be proved against him, but there could not be even any false suspicion made to attach to him, and since not only the open attacks of his enemies were unable to injure him, but even the secret plots of his mother against him proved harmless to him. After she came to Larinum, she, who had pretended to be persuaded that poison had been previously given to her husband by that man Strato, immediately gave him a shop at Larinum, properly furnished and provided for carrying on the business of an apothecary. One, two, three years did Sassia remain quiet, so that she seemed rather to be wishing and hoping for some misfortune to her son, than to be planning and contriving any such thing against him.

Then in the meantime, in the consulship of Hortensius and Metellus, in order that she might persuade Oppianicus, who was occupied about other matters, and thinking of nothing of the sort, to this accusation, she betroths to him against his will her own daughter, her whom she had borne to his father-in-law, in order that she might have him in her power, now that he was bound to her by this marriage, and also by the hope of her will. Nearly about the same time, Strato, that great physician, committed a theft and murder in his own house in the following manner: —As there was in his house a chest, in which he knew there was a good deal of money and gold, he murdered by night two slaves, while they were asleep, and threw their bodies into a fishpond. Then he cut out the bottom of the chest, and took out . . . . sesterces, and five pounds' weight of gold, with the knowledge of one of his slaves, a boy not grown up.

The theft being discovered the next day, all the suspicion attached to those slaves who did not appear. When the cutting out of the bottom of the chest was noticed, men asked how that could have been done? One of the friends of Sassia recollected that he had lately seen at an auction, among a lot of very small things, a crooked and twisted saw sold, with teeth in every direction; and by such an instrument as this it seemed that the bottom of the chest might have been cut round in the manner in which it was. To make my story short, inquiry is made of the auctioneer. That saw is found to have become the property of Strato. When suspicion was excited in this manner, andStrato was openly accused, the boy who had been privy to the deed got alarmed; he gave information of the whole business to his mistress; the men were found in the fishpond; Strato was thrown into prison; and the money, though not all of it, was found in his shop.