Pro L. Flacco

How ready to give evidence was Publius Septimius; how angry was he about some former trial, and about his steward: yet he hesitated; yet his scrupulousness was at times at variance with his anger. Marcus Caelius was an enemy to Flaccus, because, as Flaccus had thought it wrong for one publican to decide on the case of another publican, though the case was ever so evident he had been removed from the list of judges. And yet he restrained himself; and brought nothing into the court which could injure Flaccus except his own inclination to do so. If these men had been Greeks, and if our habits and principles had not had more influence than indignation and hostility, they all would have said that they had been plundered, and harassed, and stripped of their fortunes. When a Greek witness comes forward with a desire to injure a man, he does not think of the words of his oath, but of what he can say to injure him. He thinks it a most shameful thing to be defeated, to be detected, to allow his enemy's innocence to be proved. That is the contest for which he prepares himself; he cares for nothing beyond. Therefore, it is not the best men, nor the wisest, but the most impudent and talkative men who are selected as witnesses.

But you, even in private trials about the most trifling matters, carefully weigh the character of a witness; even if you know the person of the man, and his name and his tribe, still you think it right to inquire into his habits. And when a man of our citizens gives his evidence, how carefully does he restrain himself, how scrupulously does he regulate all his expressions, how fearful is he, and anxious not to say anything covetously or angrily,— not to say one word more or less than necessary! Do you think that those Greeks are so too? men to whom an oath is a joke, evidence a plaything, your opinion of them a shadow, men who place all their credit and profit and reputation, and triumph telling the most impudent lies. But I will not spin out what I have got to say. Indeed, my speech would be interminable if I were to take it into my head to unfold the faithlessness of the whole nation in giving evidence. But I will come nearer home; I will speak of these witnesses whom you have brought forward.

We have got a most zealous prosecutor, O judges, and an enemy in every respect violent and furious against us. I trust that he may be of great use to his friends and to the republic; but at all events, he has undertaken this case and this prosecution, as if he were impelled by some most extraordinary eagerness. What a company attended him while pursuing his investigations! company, do I say? rather, what an army! what profusion! what expense! what prodigality was there! And though these statements are of service to my case, still I do not make them without apprehension lest Laelius should think that I am seeking by my oration to make him talked about, or to excite odium against him, in a business which he has undertaken for the sole object of acquiring credit. Therefore, I will pass over all this part of the subject. I will only beg of you, O judges, if you have heard anything yourselves by common report and in ordinary conversation about force, and violence, and arms, and troops, to recollect it and to remember, because of the unpopularity of such conduct, that by this recent law, a certain number of companions has been fixed as the greatest number that ought to attend a man while prosecuting such an inquiry.

However, to say nothing of violence, what conduct is this? which, since it was adopted according to the privileges and customs of prosecutors we cannot impeach, but still we are compelled to complain if it. I mean, first of all, the making a statement which has been bruited abroad over all Asia, (different people having had regular districts assigned to them, in which they were to

And thus this young man, full of ability, worked on the wealthy by fear, on the poor by bribes, on the stupid by leading them into mistakes; and by these means he extorted those beautiful decrees which have been read to you,—decrees which were not passed by any formal vote or regular authority, nor under the sanction of an oath, but carried by holding up the hand, and by the loud shouts of an excited multitude. O for the admirable customs and principles which we received from our ancestors, if we could but keep them! but somehow or other they have slipped through our fingers. For our ancestors, those wise and upright men, would not permit the public assembly to have any authority to make laws; they chose that whatever the common people decided, or whatever the burgesses wished to enact should be ordered or forbidden, after the assembly was adjourned, and after all the parts had been properly arranged, by the different ranks, classes, and ages, distributed in their tribes and centuries, after having listened to the advocates of the proposal on which the vote was to be taken, and after the proposal itself had been for many days before the people, and had had its merits inquired into.

But all the republics of the Greeks are governed by the rashness of the assembly while sitting. Therefore, to say no more of this Greece, which has long since been overthrown and crushed through the folly of its own counsels; that ancient country, which once flourished with riches, and rower, and glory, fell owing to that one evil, the immoderate liberty and licentiousness of the popular assemblies. When inexperienced men, ignorant and uninstructed in any description of business whatever, took their seats in the theatre, then they undertook inexpedient wars; then they appointed seditious men to the government of the republic; then they banished from the city the citizens who had deserved best of the state.

But if these things were constantly taking place at Athens, when that was the first city, not only in Greece, but in almost all the world, what moderation do you suppose there was in the assemblies in Phrygia and Mysia? It is usually men of those nations who throw our own assemblies into confusion; what do you suppose is the case when they are by themselves? Athenagoras, that celebrated man of Cyme, was beaten with rods, because, at a time of famine, he had ventured to export corn. An assembly was summoned at the request of Laelius. Athenagoras came forward, and, being a Greek among Greeks, he said a good deal, not about his fault, but in the way of complaining of his punishment. They voted by holding up their hands. A decree was passed. Is this evidence? The men of Pergamus, having been lately feasted, having been a little while before glutted with every sort of present,—I mean, all the cobblers and girdle-makers in Pergamus,—cried out whatever Mithridates (who governed that multitude, not by his authority, but by fattening them up) chose. Is this the testimony of that city? I brought witnesses from Sicily in pursuance of the public resolution of the island. But the evidence that I brought was the evidence not of an excited assembly, but of a senate on its oath.

So that I am not now arguing against the reception of evidence; but you are to decide whether these statements are to be considered evidence. A virtuous young man, born in an honourable rank, and eloquent, comes with a most numerous and splendidly appointed train into a town of the Greeks. He demands an assembly. He frightens wealthy men and men of authority from opposing him by summoning them to give evidence; he tempts the needy and worthless by the hope of being employed on the commission, and by a public grant for the expenses of their journey, and also by his own private liberality. What trouble is it to excite artisans, and shopkeepers, and all such dregs of a city, against any man, and especially against one who has lately had the supreme authority there, and could not possibly be very popular, on account of the odium attached to the very name of supreme power?

And is it strange that those men who abominate the sight of our faces, who detest our name, who hate our tax on pastures, and our tenths, and our harbour dues, more than death itself, should gladly seize on every opportunity of injuring us that presents itself? Remember, therefore, that when you hear decrees you are not hearing evidence; that you are listening to the rashness of the common people; that you are listening to the assertions of all the most worthless men; that you are listening to the murmurs of the ignorant, to the voice of an inflamed assembly of a most worthless nation. Therefore examine closely into the nature and motive of all their accusations, and you will find no reason for them except the hopes by which they have been led on, or the terrors and threats by which they have been driven ---

The cities have nothing in the treasury, nothing in their revenues. There are two ways of raising money,—by tribute, or by loan. No lists of creditors are brought forward; no exaction of tribute is accounted for. But I pray you to remark how cheerfully they are in the habit of producing false accounts, and of entering in their accounts whatever suits them, forming your opinions by the letters of Cnaeus Pompeius to Hypsaeus, and of Hypsaeus to Pompeius. [The letters of Pompeius and of Hypsaeus are read.] Do not we appear to prove to you clearly enough, by the authority of these men, the profligate habits and impudent licentiousness of the Greeks? Unless, perchance, we suppose that those men who deceived Cnaeus Pompeius, and that too, when he was on the spot and when there was no one tempting them to do so, were likely now to be either timid or scrupulous, when Laelius urged them to bear witness against Lucius Flaccus in his absence.

But even suppose those documents were not tampered with in their own city, still what authority or what credit can they now have here? The law orders them to be brought to the praetor within three days, and to be sealed up with the seals of the judges; they are scarcely brought within thirty days. In order that the writings may not be easily tampered with, therefore the law orders that after they have been sealed up they shall be kept in a public office; but these are sealed up after they have been tampered with. What difference, then, does it make, whether they are brought to the judges so long after the proper time, or whether they are not brought at all? What shall we say if the zeal of the witnesses is in partnership, as it were, with the prosecutor? shall they still be considered witnesses? What then, is become of that expectation which ought to have a place in courts of justice? For formerly, when a prosecutor had said anything with bitterness and vehemence, and when the counsel for the defence had made a supplicatory and submissive reply, the third step expected was the appearance of the witnesses who either spoke without any partisanship at all, or else they in some degree concealed their desires. But what is the case here?

They are sitting with the prosecutor; they rise up from the prosecutor's bench; they use no concealment; they feel no apprehension. Do I complain of where they sit? They come with him from his house, if they trip at one word, they will have no place to return to. Can any one be a witness, when the prosecutor can examine him without any anxiety and have not the slightest fear of his giving him any answer which he is unwilling to hear? Where, then, is the oratorical skill, which formerly used to be looked for either in the prosecutor or in the counsel for the defence? “He examined the witness cleverly; he came up to him cunningly; he scolded him; he led him where he pleased; he convicted him and made him dumb.”