Pro A. Cluentio

He adopts this plan,—he promises some of the most insignificant of the judges some money; then he keeps it back, hoping by this means (as he thought that the respectable men would, of their own accord, judge with impartiality) to make those who were less esteemed furious against Oppianicus on account of their disappointment. Therefore, as he had always been a blundering and a perverse fellow, he begins with Bulbus, and finding him sulky and yawning because he had got nothing for a long time, he gives him a gentle spur. “What will you do,” says he, “will you help me, O Bulbus, so that we need not serve the republic for nothing?” But he, as soon as he heard this—“For nothing,” said he, “I will follow whenever you like. But what have you got?” Then he promises him forty thousand sesterces if Oppianicus is acquitted. And he begs him to summon the rest of those with whom he is accustomed to converse, and he, the contriver of the whole business, adds Gutta [*](This is quite untranslatable; it is a set of puns. Gutta is the name of one judge, Bulbus of another; but gutta also means a drop, and bulbus means an onion. He sprinkles a drop on this onion, or he pours water on the onion to boil it.) to Bulbus.

Therefore, he did not seem at all bitter after the taste he had had of his discourse. One or two days passed, when the matter appeared somewhat doubtful. He wanted the agent and some security for the money. Then Bulbus addresses the man with a cheerful countenance, as caressingly as he can “What will you do,” says he, “O Paetus?” (For Stalenus had chosen this surname for himself from the images of the Aelii, lest if he called himself Ligur, he should seem to be using the name of his nation rather than that of his family.) “Men are asking me where the money is about which you talked to me.” On this that most manifest rogue, fed on gains acquired by tampering with the courts of justice, as he had now all his hopes and all his heart set upon that sum of money which he had got in his house, begins to frown. (Recollect his face, and the expression that you have seen him put on.) He complains that he has been thrown out by Oppianicus; and he, a man wholly made up of fraud and lies, and who had even improved those vices which he had by nature, by careful study, and by a regular sort of system of wickedness, declares positively that he has been cheated by Oppianicus; and he adds this assertion,—that he will be condemned by the vote which in his case every one was to give openly.