Pro L. Flacco

Oh that night which that day followed! happy was it for this city; but, wretched man that I am, I fear it may still prove disastrous to me myself. What spirit was then shown by Lucius Flaccus! (for I will say nothing about myself,) what devotion to his country, what virtue, what firmness! But why do I speak of those things which then, at the time that they happened, were extolled to the skies by the cordial agreement of all men, by the unanimous voice of the Roman people, by the testimony in their favour of the whole world? Now I fear, not only that they may be no advantage to my client, but that they may even be some injury to him. Indeed, I sometimes fancy that the memory of bad men is much more lively than that of good men. It is I, if any disaster happens to you, O Flaccus, it is I who shall have betrayed you; it is that pledge of mine which will be in fault, that promise of mine, that undertaking of mine, when I promised, that if we by our joint efforts could preserve the republic, you, as long as you lived, should not only be defended, but also honoured by the espousal of your cause by all virtuous men. I did think, O judges, I did hope that, even if our honour appeared to you a consideration of no importance at all events you would take care of our safety.

But if, O judges, this terrible injury should overwhelm Lucius Flaccus (may the immortal gods avert the omen!) still he will never repent of having provided for your safety, of having consulted the interests of you, and of your wives, and of your children, and your entire welfare. It will always be his feeling that he owed such sentiments to the nobleness of his race, and to his religion, and to his country; you, O judges, take care that you have no cause to repent of not having spared such a citizen. For how few are they who adopt these principles in the republic; who desire only to please you and men like you; who think the authority of every virtuous and honourable man and body of men of the greatest weight, seeing that that path is both the one which leads most easily to honours and everything which they desire. But let everything else belong to our adversaries: let them keep to themselves power, and honours, and all the best opportunities of attaining all other advantages let it be allowed to those men who have striven to preserve all these things, to be at least safe themselves.

Do not think, O judges, that they, who are now starting fresh who have not as yet arrived at honours, are not looking anxiously for the result of this trial. If the exceeding affection of Lucius Flaccus for all good men, and his great devotion to the republic turns out an injury to him, who do you expect will in future be so insane, as not to think that path of life which he has hitherto been accustomed to consider slippery and dangerous preferable to this level and steady one? But if you, O judges, are tired of such citizens declare it; those who can will change their opinions, those who have their path still to choose will soon make up their minds what to do we who have advanced as far as we have must bear this result of our rashness. If you wish as many as possible to be of this opinion, you will declare by this decision what your sentiments are.

By your decision in this case, O judges, you will give this unhappy suppliant to you and to your children—precepts by which to regulate his life. If you preserve his father to him, you will prescribe to him what sort of citizen he himself ought to be. If you take his father from him, you will show that there is no reward held out by you to virtuous and wise and consistent conduct. And he now, (since he is of that age that he is able to feel for his father's agony, but not yet to be any assistance to his father in his dangers,) he, I say, entreats you not to add his father's tears to his sorrow, or his weeping to his father's misery. He fixes his eyes on me also, he implores me by his looks, he, as I may say, appeals to my good faith, and claims of me that honour for his father which I once promised him in return for the safety of his country. Pity his family, O judges; pity that most gallant father; pity the son: preserve to the republic that most noble and glorious name, either for the sake of the blood, or of the antiquity of the family, or else for the sake of the individual.