Pro A. Cluentio

On this the judges began to laugh; the counsel began to get in a rage, and to be very indignant that his cause was taken out of his mouth, and that he could not go on saying “Look, O judges,” from that place; nor was anything nearer happening, than his pursuing him and seizing him by the throat, and bringing him back to his seat, in order that he might be able to finish his summing up. And so Fabricius was condemned, in the first place by his own judgment, which is the severest condemnation of all, and in the second place by the authority of the law, and by the sentences of the judges. Why, now, need we say any more of this cause of Oppianicus? He was brought as a defendant before those very judges by whom he had already been condemned in ten previous examinations. By the same judges, who, by the condemnation of Fabricius, had in reality passed sentence on Oppianicus, his trial was appointed to come on first. He was accused of the gravest crimes, both of those which have already been briefly mentioned by me, and of many others besides, all of which I now pass over. He was accused before those men who had already condemned both Scamander the agent of Oppianicus, and Fabricius his accomplice in crime.

Which, O ye immortal gods! is most to be wondered at, that he was condemned, or that he dared to make any reply? For what could those judges do? If they had condemned the Fabricii when innocent, still in the case of Oppianicus they ought to have been consistent with themselves, and to have made their present decision harmonize with their previous ones. Could they themselves of their own accord rescind their own judgments, when other men, when giving judgment, are accustomed most especially to take care that their decisions be not at variance with those of other judges? And could those who had condemned the freedman of Fabricius, because he had been an agent in the crime, and his patron, because he had been privy to it, acquit the principal and original contriver of the whole wickedness? Could those who, without any previous examination, had condemned the other men from what appeared in the cause itself, acquit this man whom they knew to have been already convicted twice over?