For A. Cluentius (176-180)

The examination was adjourned on that day, by the advice of the friends who were present. After a sufficient interval of time, they are summoned a second time. The examination is repeated all over again. No degree of the most terrible torture is emitted. The witnesses who had been summoned turned away, and could scarcely bear to witness it. The cruel and barbarous woman began to storm, and to be furious that her plans were not proceeding as she had hoped that they would. When the torturer and the very tortures themselves were worn out, and still she would not desist, one of the men who had been summoned as witnesses, a man distinguished by honours conferred on him by the people, and endued with the highest virtue, said that he plainly saw that the object was not to find out the truth, but to compel them to give some false evidence. After the rest had shown their approbation of these words, it was resolved by the unanimous opinion of them all, that the examination had been carried far enough.

Nicostratus is restored to Oppianicus; Sassia goes to Larinum with her friends, grieving, because she thought that her son would certainly be safe; since not only no true accusation could be proved against him, but there could not be even any false suspicion made to attach to him, and since not only the open attacks of his enemies were unable to injure him, but even the secret plots of his mother against him proved harmless to him. After she came to Larinum, she, who had pretended to be persuaded that poison had been previously given to her husband by that man Strato, immediately gave him a shop at Larinum, properly furnished and provided for carrying on the business of an apothecary.

Then in the meantime, in the consulship of Hortensius and Metellus, in order that she might persuade Oppianicus, who was occupied about other matters, and thinking of nothing of the sort, to this accusation, she betroths to him against his will her own daughter, her whom she had borne to his father-in-law, in order that she might have him in her power, now that he was bound to her by this marriage, and also by the hope of her will. Nearly about the same time, Strato, that great physician, committed a theft and murder in his own house in the following manner: —As there was in his house a chest, in which he knew there was a good deal of money and gold, he murdered by night two slaves, while they were asleep, and threw their bodies into a fishpond. Then he cut out the bottom of the chest, and took out . . . . sesterces, and five pounds' weight of gold, with the knowledge of one of his slaves, a boy not grown up.

The theft being discovered the next day, all the suspicion attached to those slaves who did not appear. When the cutting out of the bottom of the chest was noticed, men asked how that could have been done? One of the friends of Sassia recollected that he had lately seen at an auction, among a lot of very small things, a crooked and twisted saw sold, with teeth in every direction; and by such an instrument as this it seemed that the bottom of the chest might have been cut round in the manner in which it was. To make my story short, inquiry is made of the auctioneer. That saw is found to have become the property of Strato. When suspicion was excited in this manner, andStrato was openly accused, the boy who had been privy to the deed got alarmed; he gave information of the whole business to his mistress; the men were found in the fishpond; Strato was thrown into prison; and the money, though not all of it, was found in his shop.