For M. Tullius (32)

for, if that addition had not been made, and if you had chosen to urge, in your defence, that your household had not done this, you would have gained your cause if you had been able to prove this. Now, whether you had chosen to use that defence, or this one which you are using, you must inevitably be convicted; unless we think that a man is brought before the court who has formed a plan, but that one who has actually done an action is not; since a design may be supposed to exist without any act being done, but an act cannot exist without a design. Or, because the act is such that it could not be done without a secret design, without the aid of the darkness of night, without violence, without injury to another, without arms, without murder, without wickedness, is it on that account to be decided to have been done without malice? Or, will you suppose that the pleading has been rendered more difficult for me in the very case in which the praetor intended that a scandalous plea in defence should be taken from him?