Oh, but the whole senate judged that that tribunal had been bribed. How so? It undertook the cause. Could it pass over with indifference a matter of that sort when reported to it? When a tribune of the people, having stirred up the multitude, had almost brought the matter to a trial of strength; when a most virtuous citizen and most innocent man was said to have been unjustly condemned through the influence of money; when the whole body of senators was exceedingly unpopular, was it possible for no edict to be issued? Was it possible for all that excitement of the multitude to be disregarded without extreme danger to the republic? But what was decreed? How justly, how wisely, how diligently was it decreed? “If there are any men by whose agency the public court of justice was corrupted.” Does the senate appear here to decide that any such thing was really done? or rather to be exceedingly angry and indignant if such a thing was done? If Aulus Cluentius himself were asked his opinion about the courts of justice he would express no other sentiments than those which they expressed, by whose sentences you say that Aulus Cluentius was condemned.

But I ask of you whether Lucius Lucullus, the consul, a very wise man, passed that law according to that resolution of the senate? I ask whether Marcus Lucullus and Caius Cassius passed that law, against whom, when they were the consuls elect, the senate passed the very same resolution? They did not pass it. And that which you assert to have been brought about by Habitus's money, though you do not confirm your assertion by even the very slightest circumstances of suspicion, was done in the first instance by the justice and wisdom of those consuls, in order that men might not think that what the senate had decreed for the purpose of extinguishing the flames of present unpopularity, might afterwards be referred to the people. The Roman people itself afterwards, which formerly when excited by the fictitious complaints of Lucius Quinctius, a tribune of the people, had demanded that thing and the proposal of that law, now being influenced by the tears of the son of Caius Junius, a little boy, rejected the whole law and the whole proposition with the greatest outcry and with the greatest eagerness.

From which that was easy to be understood which has been often said,—that as the sea, which by its own nature is tranquil, is often agitated and disturbed by the violence of the winds, so, too, the Roman people is, when left to itself, placable, but is easily roused by the language of seditious men, as by the most violent storm. There is also one other very great authority besides, which I had almost passed over in a shameful manner; for it is said to be my own. Attius read out of some oration or other, which he said was mine, a certain exhortation to the judges to judge honestly, and a certain mention of judicial decisions in other cases, which had not been approved of, and also of that very trial before Junius; just as if I had not said at the beginning of this defence, that had been a trial which had incurred great unpopularity; or as if, when I was discussing the discredit into which the courts of justice had fallen in some instances, I could possibly at that time pass over that one which was so notorious.

But I, if I said anything of that sort, did not mention it as a thing within my own knowledge, nor did I state it in evidence; and that speech was prompted rather by the occasion, than by my judgment and deliberate intention. For when I was acting as accuser, and had proposed to myself at the beginning to rouse the feelings of the Roman people and of the judges; and as I was mentioning all the errors of the courts of justice, relying not on my own opinion, but on the common report of men; I could not pass over that matter which had been so universally discussed. But whoever thinks that he has my positive opinions recorded indelibly in those orations which we have delivered in the courts of justice, is greatly mistaken. For all those speeches are speeches of the cause, and of the occasion, and are not the speeches of the men or of the advocates themselves. For if the causes themselves could speak for themselves, no one would employ an orator. But, as it is, we are employed, in order to say, not things which are to be considered as asserted on our own authority, but things which are derived from the circumstances of the cause itself.

They say that that able man, Marcus Antonius, was accustomed to say, “that he had never written a speech, in order that, if at any time he had said anything which was not desirable, he might be able to deny that he had said it.” Just as if whatever were said or pleaded by us was not retained in men's memories, if we did not ourselves commit it to writing. But I, with respect to speeches of that sort, am guided by the authority of many men, and especially of that most eloquent and most wise man, Lucius Crassus; who—when he was defending Lucius Plancius, whom Marcus Brutus, a man both vehement and able as a speaker, was prosecuting; when Brutus, having set two men to read, made them read alternate chapters out of two speeches of his, entirely contrary to one another, because when he was arguing against that motion which was introduced against the colony of Narbo, he disparaged the authority of the senate as much as he could, but when he was urging the adoption of the Servilian law, he extolled the senate with the most excessive praises; and when he had read out of that oration many things which had been spoken with some harshness against the Roman knights, in order to inflame the minds of those judges against Crassus—is said to have been a good deal agitated.