Pro A. Cluentio

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?