When in the greatest perils of this city and empire, in the most important and terrible
disasters of the republic, I was repelling slaughter from you, your wives, and your children,
devastation from your temples, your altars, from the city and from Italy, with Lucius Flaccus,
the companion and assistant of my counsels and my dangers, I used to hope, O judges, that I
should some time or other be an assistant of Lucius Flaccus towards obtaining honour, rather
than an advocate to defend him from calamity. For what reward of dignity could there be which
the Roman people would deny to him, when it had always given them to his ancestors; when Lucius
Flaccus had imitated the ancient glory of the Valerian family in delivering his country, nearly
five hundred years after the existence of the republic?
But if by chance there had existed at any time any detractor from this service, any enemy of
this virtue, and envier of this renown, still I thought that Lucius Flaccus would have to
encounter the judgment of an ignorant mob, (with no real danger, indeed,) rather than that of
most wise and carefully chosen men. I never, indeed, imagined that any one would bring danger
upon, or devise plots against, his fortunes, by means of those very men, by whose influence, and
under whose protection, the safety, not only of all the citizens, but even of all nations, was
at that time defended and preserved. And if it was fated ever to happen that any one should
devise mischief to Lucius Flaccus, still I never thought, O judges, that Decimus Laelius, the
son of a most virtuous man, himself a man of the fairest expectations and of the highest
dignity, would adopt an accusation which is more suitable to the hatred and madness of wicked
citizens than to his virtue and to the training of his early years. Indeed, as I had often seen
well-founded enmities with citizens who had deserved well of their country, laid aside by the
most illustrious men, I did not think that any friend of the republic, after the affection of
Lucius Flaccus had been thoroughly tried, would take up a fresh quarrel against him without
having received any injury.
But since, O judges, many things have deceived us, both in our
own affairs and in those of the republic, those things which must be borne, we bear. This only
we ask of you,—that you will consider that the whole strength of the republic,—the whole
constitution of the state,—all the memory of past, and the safety of present and the hope of
future time, hangs and depends upon your power, upon your votes, upon this single trial. If ever
the republic has had need to implore the wisdom, the gravity, the prudence and the
foresight of her judges, she implores it now,—she implores it, I say, at this present time.
You are not now about to decide on the constitution of Lydians, or Mysians, or Phrygians, who,
under the influence of some compulsion or excitement have come before you; but on your own
republic,—on the constitution of your own state,—on the common safety,—on the hope of all good
men, if there is any such still remaining to support the minds and thoughts of brave citizens.
Every other refuge of good men,—every other protection of innocent men,—every bulwark of the
republic, wisdom, assistance, and laws, has failed.
For whom
else can I appeal to? whom can I cite? whom can I entreat? The senate? Nay; the senate itself
implores assistance from you, and feels that the confirmation of its authority is submitted to
your decision. The Roman knights? You yourselves, the fifty chief men of that body, will declare
how far your sentiments are in unison with those of the rest. Shall I appeal to the Roman
people? That body has delivered over to you all its power over us in our case. Wherefore, unless
we can maintain in this place, and before you, and by your means, O judges, I will not say our
authority, for that is lost but our safety, which hangs on a slender hope, and that hope our
last, we have no place of refuge beyond to which we can betake ourselves. Unless perchance, O
judges, you fail to see, as yet, what is the real object of this proceeding, what is really at
stake, and what is the cause, the foundations of which are being now laid.
The man has been condemned who slew Catiline when he was bearing his hostile
standards against his country. What reason is there why he who drove Catiline from the city
should be exempt from fear? That man is demanded for punishment who discovered the proofs of the
common destruction of all which was then being planned. Why should he feel safe who took care to
produce and divulge those proofs? The partners of his counsels, his ministers and comrades are
harassed. What are the leaders, and chiefs, and principal men of his party to expect? We should
then see whether at that time all good men were my guides or my companions in preserving the
common safety of
He preferred saying they were strangled. These fragments are from a
Vatican MS. first inserted in the text by Nobbe.
What did my friend Caetra wish?
And I wish that my enemies, and those of all good men, would rather attack me; I wish it
really was mine. The senate to a great extent
O ye immortal gods! that Lentulus
[What This passage is an addition of Beier from a Milan MS. inserted in
the same way by Orellius. was the use of bringing forward foreign evidence,] when his
domestic life and his natural disposition was notorious? Therefore, I will not, O Decimus
Laelius, allow you to assume this law and this condition as applicable to yourself and to the
rest for the future, and to us at present; [so as to lay down a rule that we are to accommodate
our defences to the will of the prosecutors, and not come to those assertions to which our cause
of itself leads us.]
When you have branded his youth, when you have stigmatized the rest of his life with stains of
infamy, when you have brought forward the ruin of his private affairs and his disgrace in the
city, and his vices and crimes in Spain and Gaul and Cilicia, and Crete, in which provinces he
lived in no great obscurity, then we shall hear what the people of Tmolus and the Lorymeni think
of Lucius Flaccus. But the man whom so many and such influential provinces wish to be
saved,—whom many citizens from all parts of Italy defended, being bound to him by intimate
connection and old friendship,—whom this the common country of us all holds fast in her embrace,
on account of her fresh recollection of his great services,—him, even if all Asia demands him
for punishment, I will defend,—his enemies I will resist. What if it is not all Asia that
demands him, nor the best part of it nor even any part without bribery, nor of its own accord,
nor rightly, nor in a manner according to custom, nor with truth, nor with any conscientious
regard to justice or honesty? If it duly demands him because it has been persuaded, and tampered
with, and excited, and compelled to do so,—if it has backed this prosecution with its name
impiously, and rashly, and covetously, and with great inconsistency, speaking only by the mouth
of the most needy witnesses, and if the province itself has no grounds to complain with truth of
any injuries done by him; still, O judges, will these statements, heard with
reference to a very brief epoch diminish the credit due to actions which we really know,
extending over a long period of time?
I, therefore, as his defender, will preserve this order which his enemy avoids; and I will
pursue and follow up the prosecutor, and of my own accord I will demand the accusation from our
adversary. What is it, O Laelius? Have you at any time been able to stigmatize the youth of
Lucius Flaccus, who has passed his time, not in the shade, nor in the common pursuits and
training of those his age? In truth, even as a boy he went with his father, the consul, to the
wars; and yet, even as to this very fact you accused him of something because [something This passage is an addition of Beier from a Milan MS. inserted in the same way
by Orellius. appeared able to be said so as to excite suspicion.]
With what charges, then, O Laelius, do you attack my client being such a man as he is? He was
in Cilicia a military tribune when Publius Servilius was the general; not a word is said about
that. He was quaestor to Marcus Piso in Spain; not a word has been uttered about his
quaestorship. He was present at the greater part of the Cretan war, and went through all its
hardships in the company of that consummate general. The accusation is dumb with regard to this
period. His discharge of his duties as judge during his praetorship,—a business of great
intricacy, and affording numberless causes for suspicion and enmities, is not touched. Nay more,
though it fell in a most critical and perilous time of the republic, it is praised even by his
enemies. “Oh, but damaging evidence has been given against him.” Before I say by whom it was
given, by what hopes, by what violence, by what means the witnesses were urged on, and what
insignificant, needy, treacherous, audacious men they were, I will speak of their whole class,
and of the condition in which all of us are placed. In the name of the immortal gods, O judges,
will you ask of unknown witnesses in what way the man decided trials in Asia, who the year
before had sat as judge at Rome? And will you yourselves form no conjectures on the subject? In
a jurisdiction so various, many decrees were issued,—many desires of influential men were set at
nought; and yet, what words, (I will not say of suspicion, for that is often false, but) of
anger or indignation were ever once uttered against him?
And is that man to be put on his trial
for covetousness, who, when employed on a business affording numerous opportunities for such
conduct, shunned all base gain,—who, in a city much given to evil speaking, and in an office
surrounded with suspicion avoided, not only all accusation, but even a single hard name? I pass
over points which I ought not to pass over that in his private affairs no covetous action, no
eagerness about money matters, no sordid conduct in the management of his estate can be alleged
against him. By what witnesses, then, can I refute these men except by you?
Shall that villager from near Tmolus,—a man not only a stranger to us, but not
even known among his own neighbours,—teach you what sort of a man Lucius Flaccus is, whom you
yourselves have known to be most modest as a youth, whom our most extensive provinces have found
to be a most conscientious man and whom our armies know by experience to be a thoroughly brave
soldier and vigilant general, and of a lieutenant and quaestor most moderate; whom you
yourselves, being witnesses on the spot of his conduct, have judged to be a thoroughly wise and
consistent senator, a most upright praetor, and a citizen wholly devoted to the republic.
Will you then listen to others as witnesses on those points, respecting which you yourselves
ought rather to bear witness to others? And what witnesses are they? In the first place, I will
say that they are Greeks, (that is the case of them all.) Not that I, for my own part, would be
more inclined than others to refuse credit to that nation; for if ever there was any one of our
countrymen not averse to that race of men, and proving himself so by zeal and good-will, I think
that I am that man, and that I was so even more when I had more leisure; but there are in that
body many virtuous, many learned, many modest men, and they have not been brought hither to this
trial. There are also many impudent, illiterate, worthless persons, and those I see here,
impelled by various motives. But I say this of the whole race of Greeks; I allow them learning,
I allow them a knowledge of many arts; I do not deny them wit in conversation, acuteness of
talents, and fluency in speaking; even if they claim praise for other sorts of ability, I will
not make any objection; but a scrupulous regard to truth in giving their evidence is not a
virtue that that nation has ever cultivated; they are utterly ignorant what is the meaning of
that quality, they know nothing of its authority or of its weight.
Where does that expression, “Give evidence for me, and I will
give evidence for you,” come from? is it supposed to be a phrase of the Gauls, or of the
Spaniards? It belongs wholly to the Greeks; so that even those who do not understand Greek know
what form of expression is used by the Greeks for this. Therefore, when they give their
evidence, remark with what a countenance, with what confidence they give it; and then you will
become aware how scrupulous they are as to what evidence they give. They never reply precisely
to a question. They always answer an accuser more than he asks them. They never feel any anxiety
to make what they say seem probable to any one; but are solicitous only how to get out what they
have got to say. Marcus Lurco gave evidence against Flaccus, being angry (as he said himself)
because his freedman had been condemned by a decision of his involving infamy. He said nothing
which could injure him, though he was eager to do so; for his conscientious regard to his oath
prevented him. And yet with what modesty, with what trembling
and paleness did he say what he did!
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 spread the report,) that Cnaeus Pompeius, because he is a
most zealous enemy to Lucius Flaccus, had begged of Decimus Laelius, his father's and his own
most intimate friend, to prosecute him on this charge, and that he placed at his disposal for
the furtherance of this business, all his own authority, and influence, and resources, and
riches. And this appeared all the more probable to the Greeks, because a little before they had
seen Laelius in the same province with Flaccus, and on terms of great intimacy with him. And as
the authority of Pompeius is great with every one, as indeed it ought to be, so especially is it
predominant in that province which he has lately delivered from the war which pirates and kings
were waging against it. He did this besides: those who did not wish to leave their homes he
terrified with a summons to give their evidence; those who could not remain at home, he provided
with a large and liberal sum for travelling expenses.