Pro A. Cluentio

Can you say, (for it occurs to me to think what possibly can be said, even if it has not been said as yet,) that when the investigation about the robbery was proceeding, Strato made some confession respecting the poisoning? By this single means, O judges, truth, though kept under by the wickedness of many, often raises its head, and the defence which has been cut away from innocence gets breathing time; either because they who are cunning in devising fraud, do not dare to execute all that they devise, or because they whose audacity is conspicuous and prominent, are destitute of the craftiness of malice. But if cunning were bold, or audacity crafty, it would scarcely be possible to resist them. Was there no robbery committed? Nothing was more notorious at Larinum. Did no suspicion attach to Strato? On the contrary, he was accused on account of the circumstance of the saw, and he was also informed against by the boy who was his accomplice. Was that not stated in the investigation? Why, what other reason was there for making the investigation at all? Did Strato then, (this is what you are bound to say, and what Sassia was constantly saying at that time,) while the investigation was going on about the robbery, while under the torture, make any confession about the poisoning!

Behold now, here is the case which I have just mentioned. The woman abounds in audacity, she is deficient in contrivance and in ability. For many documents of what came out in the investigation are preserved, which have been read to you, and made public, those very documents which he said were then sealed up; and in all these documents there is not one letter about theft. It never once occurred to her to write out the first speech of Strato about the robbery, and after that, to add to it some expression about poisoning, which might seem not to have been extracted by any interrogatory, but to have been wrung from him by pain. The investigation into the robbery was superseded by the suspicion of the poisoning, which was a previous subject for investigation, which this very woman herself had pointed out; who, after she had come to the resolution (being compelled thereto by the opinion of her friends,) that the examination had been pushed far enough, for three years afterwards loved that man Strato above all the other slaves, and held him in the greatest honour, and loaded him with all sorts of kindnesses.