For Publius Quinctius (84-87)

Everything, O Caius Aquillius, is of such a nature that any one may be able to perceive that in this cause dishonesty and interest are contending with poverty and truth. How did the praetor order you to take possession? I suppose, in accordance with his edict. In what words was the recognizance drawn up? “If the goods of Publius Quinctius have been taken possession of in accordance with the praetor's edict.” Let us return to the edict. How does that enjoin you to take possession? Is there any pretence, O Caius Aquillius, if he took possession in quite a different way from that which the praetor enjoined, for denying that then he did not take possession according to the edict, but that I have beaten him in the trial? None, I imagine. Let us refer to the edict.—“They who in accordance with my edict have come into possession.” He is speaking of you, Naevius, as you think; for you say that you came into possession according to the edict. He defines for you what you are to do; he instructs you; he gives you precepts. “It seems that those ought to be in possession.” How? “That which they can rightly secure in the place where they now are, let them secure there; that which they cannot, they may carry or lead away.” What then? “It is not right,” says he, “to drive away the owner against his will.” The very man who with the object of cheating is keeping out of the way, the very man who deals dishonestly with all his creditors, he forbids to be driven off his farm against his will.

As you are on your way to take possession, O Sextus Naevius, the praetor himself openly says to you—“Take possession in such manner that Naevius may have possession at the same time with you; take possession in such a manner that no violence may be offered to Quinctius.” What? how do you observe that? I say nothing of his not having been a man who was keeping out of the way, of his being a man who had a house, a wife, children, and an agent at Rome; I say nothing of all this: I say this, that the owner was expelled from his farm; that hands were laid on their master by his own slaves, before his own household gods; I say ⋯

I showed how many things ought to be done before a demand was made that the goods of a relation should be taken possession of; especially when he had at Rome his house, his wife, his children, and an agent who was equally an intimate friend of both. I proved that when he said the recognizances were forfeited, there were actually no recognizances at all; that on the day on which he says he gave him the promise, he was not even at Rome. I promised that I would make that plain by witnesses, who both must know the truth, and who had no reason for speaking falsely. I proved also that it was not possible that the goods should have been taken possession of according to the edict; because he was neither said to have kept out of the way for the purpose of fraud, nor to have left the country in banishment.

The charge remains, that no one defended him at the trial. In opposition to which I argued that he was most abundantly defended, and that not by a man unconnected with him, nor by any slanderous or worthless person, but by a Roman knight, his own relation and intimate friend, whom Sextus Naevius himself had been accustomed previously to leave as his own agent. And that even if he did appeal to the tribunes, he was not on that account the less prepared to submit to a trial; and that Naevius had not had his rights wrested from him by the powerful interest of the agent; that on the other hand he was so much superior to us in interest that he now scarcely gives us the liberty of breathing.