For A. Cluentius (121-125)

Therefore, O judges, I will not only prove what you are already aware of, that the censorial animadversions, and the reasons given for them too, have often been overturned by the votes of the Roman people, but that they have also been upset by the judicial sentences of those men who, being on their oaths, were bound to give their decisions with more scrupulousness and care. In the first place, O judges, in the case of many defendants, whom the censors in their notes accused of having taken money contrary to the laws, they were guided by their own conscientious judgment, rather than by the opinion expressed by the censors. In the second place, the city praetors, who are bound by their oaths to select only the most virtuous men to be judges, have never thought that the fact of a man's having been branded with ignominy by the censors was any impediment to their making him a judge.

And lastly, the censors themselves have very often not adhered to the decisions, if you insist on their being called decisions, of former censors. And even the censors themselves consider their own decisions to be of only so much weight, that one is not afraid to find fault with, or even to rescind the sentence of the other; so that one decides on removing a man from the senate, the other wishes to have him retained in it, and thinks him worthy of the highest rank. The one orders him to be degraded to the rank of an aerarian [*] or to be entirely disfranchised; the other forbids it. So that how can it occur to you to call those judicial decisions which you see constantly rescinded by the Roman people, repudiated by judges on their oaths, disregarded by the magistrates, altered by those who have the same power subsequently conferred on them, and in which you see that the colleagues themselves repeatedly disagree?

But if the statement which has been made in their notes ought to carry weight with it because it is true, then let us inquire whether it be true or false; let the authority of the censor be put out of the question —let that consideration be taken out of the cause which has no connection with it. Tell me what money Cluentius gave, where he got it, how he gave it; show me, in short, one trace of any money having proceeded from Cluentius. After that, prove that Oppianicus was a virtuous citizen, or an honest man; that no one had ever had a bad opinion of him; that no unfavourable decision had ever been come to respecting him. Then take in the authority of the censors; then argue that their decision has any connection whatever with this case.

But as long as it is plain that Oppianicus was a man who was convicted of having tampered with the public registers of his own municipality, of having made erasures in a will, of having substituted another person in order to accomplish the forgery of a will, of having murdered the man whose name he had put to the will, of having thrown into slavery and into prison the uncle of his own son and then murdered him, of having contrived to get his own fellow-citizens proscribed and murdered, of having married the wife of the man whom he had murdered, of having given money for poisoning, of having murdered his mother-in-law and his wife, of having murdered at one time his brother's wife, the children who were expected, and his own brother himself,—lastly, of having murdered his own children; as he was a man who was manifestly detected in procuring poison for his son-in-law,—who, when his assistants and accomplices had been condemned, and when he himself was prosecuted, gave money to one of the judges to influence by bribes the votes of the other judges;—while, I say, all this is notorious about Oppianicus, and while the accusation of bribery against Cluentius is not sustained by any one single proof, what reason is there that that sentence of the censors, whether it is to be called their wish or their opinion, should either seem to be any assistance to you, or to be able to overwhelm my innocent client?