But if I or any one else had been allowed to plead this cause before those censors, I would certainly have proved to the satisfaction of men endowed with such prudence, (for the facts of the case prove it,) that they themselves had ascertained nothing, had discovered nothing; but that in all those notes appended to their animadversions nothing had guided them but rumour, and nothing had been sought but popular applause. For to the name of Publius Popillius, who had condemned Oppianicus. Lucius Gellius had appended a note, “because he had taken money to condemn an innocent man.” Now what a real conjurer that man must be, O judges, to know that a man was innocent, whom, very likely, he had never seen, when the very wisest men, to say nothing of those who actually condemned him, after investigation of the case, said that they, were not without doubt in the matter?

However, be it so. Gellius condemns Popillius. He decides that he had accepted money from Cluentius. Lentulus says that he had not. For he did not elect Popillius into the senate, because he was the son of a freedman; but he left him his place as a senator at the games, and the other ornaments of that rank, and released him from all ignominy. And by doing so, he declares his opinion, that he had voted against Oppianicus without having been bribed to do so. And afterwards Lentulus, on a trial for bribery, gave his evidence most zealously in favour of this same Popillius. Wherefore, if Lentulus did not agree with the decision of Lucius Gellius, and if Gellius was not contented with the opinion delivered by Lentulus, and if each censor thought himself not bound at all by the opinion of the other censor, what reason is there why any one of us should think that the notes of the censors ought to be all fixed and ratified so as to be unalterable for ever?

Oh, but they visited Habitus himself with their censure. Not for any baseness, nor for any, I will not say vice, but not even for any fault of his own in his whole life. For no one can possibly be a more religious man, or a more honourable one, or more scrupulous in fulfilling all his duties. Nor indeed does the opposite party say anything to the contrary, but they adopt the same report of the judges having been bribed. Nor indeed have they any contrary opinion to that which we wish to be entertained about his modesty, integrity, and virtue; but they thought it quite impossible for the accuser to be passed over after the judges had been punished. And with respect to this whole business, if I produce one precedent from the whole of our ancient history, I will say no more.

For I think that I ought not to pass over the instance of that most eminent and most illustrious man, Publius Africanus; who, when he was censor, and when Caius Licinius Sacerdos had appeared on the register of the knights, said with a loud voice, so that the whole assembly could hear him, that he knew that he had committed deliberate perjury and that if any one denied it, he would give him his own evidence in support of this assertion. But when no one ventured to deny it, he ordered him to give up his horse. “If the censors considered a knight unworthy of his rank, they struck him off of the list of knights, and deprived him of his horse, or ordered him to sell it, with the intention, no doubt, that the person thus degraded should refund to the state the money which had been advanced to him for its purchase. (Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 433.)”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 895, v. Equites. So that he, with whose decision the Roman people and foreign nations had been accustomed to content themselves, was not content with his own private knowledge as justifying him in branding another with ignominy. But if Habitus had been allowed to do this, he would have found it an easy matter to have resisted those very judges themselves, and the false suspicion, and the odium excited in the breasts of the people against him.

There is still one thing which especially perplexes me, and a topic to which I appear to have scarcely made any sufficient reply,—namely, the eulogy which you read, extracted from the will of Caius Egnatius, the father, a most honourable man, and a most wise one; saying that he had disinherited his son, because he had taken a bribe to vote for the condemnation of Oppianicus. Of that man's inconstancy and feebleness I will not say another word. This very will which you are reading is such, that he, when he was disinheriting that son whom he hated, was joining with his other son whom he loved, the most perfect strangers as his coheirs. But I think that you, O Attius, should consider carefully, whether you wish the decision of the censors, or that of Egnatius, to carry most weight with it. If that of Egnatius, that is a trifling thing which the censors have expressed in their notes about the others; for they expelled Egnatius himself from the senate, whom you wish to be considered an authority. If that of the censors is to preponderate, then the censors when they expelled his father, retained this Egnatius in the senate, whom his father disinherited on account of the note which the censors had written respecting him.