Pro A. Cluentio

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.