There was a woman of Larinum, named Dinea, the mother-in-law of Oppianicus, who had three sons, Marcus Aurius, Numerius Aurius, and Cnaeus Magius, and one daughter, Magia, who was married to Oppianicus. Marcus Aurius, quite a young man, having been taken prisoner in the social war at Asculum, fell into the hands of Quintus Sergius, a senator, who was convicted of assassination, and was put by him in his slaves' prison. But Numerius Aurius, his brother, died, and left Cnaeus Magius, his brother, his heir. Afterwards, Magia, the wife of Oppianicus, died; and last of all, that one who was the last of the sons of Dinea, Cnaeus Magius, also died. He left as his heir that young Oppianicus, the son of his sister, and enjoined that he should share the inheritance with his mother Dinea. In the meantime an informant comes to Dinea, (a man neither of obscure rank, nor uncertain as to the truth of his news,) to tell her that her son Marcus Aurius is alive, and is in the territory of Gaul, in slavery.

The woman having lost her children, when the hope of recovering one of her sons was held out to her, summoned all her relations, and all the intimate friends of her son, and with tears entreated them to undertake the business to seek out the youth, and to restore to her that son whom fortune had willed should be the only one remaining to her out of many. Just when she had begun to adopt these measures, she was taken ill. Therefore she made a will in these terms: she left to that son four hundred thousand sesterces; and she made that Oppianicus who has been already mentioned, her grandson, her heir. And a few days after, she died. However, these relations, as they had undertaken to do while Dinea was alive, when she was dead, went into the Gallic territory to search out Aurius, with the same man who had brought Dinea the information.

In the meantime, Oppianicus being, as you will have proved to you by many circumstances, a man of singular wickedness and audacity, by means of some Gaul, his intimate friend, first of all corrupted that informer with a bribe, and after that, at no great expense, managed to have Aurius himself got out of the way and murdered. But they who had gone to seek out and recover their relation, send letters to Larinum, to the Aurii the relations of that young man, and their own intimate friends, to say that the investigation was very difficult for them, because they understood that the man who had given the information had been since bribed by Oppianicus. And these letters Aulus Aurius, a brave and experienced man, and one of high rank in his own city, the near relation of the missing Marcus Aurius, read openly in the forum, in the hearing of plenty of people, in the presence of Oppianicus himself, and with a loud voice declared that he would prosecute Oppianicus if he found that Marcus Aurius had been murdered.

The feelings, not only of his relations, but also of all the citizens of Larinum, are moved by hatred of Oppianicus, and pity for that young man. Therefore, when Aulus Aurius, he who had previously made this declaration, began to follow the man with loud cries and with threats, he fled from Larinum, and betook himself to the camp of that most illustrious man, Quintus Metellus.

After that flight, the witness of his crime, and of his consciousness of it, he never ventured to commit himself to the protection of a court of justice, or of the laws,—he never dared to trust himself unarmed among his enemies; but at the time when violence was stalking abroad, after the victory of Lucius Sulla, he came to Larinum with a body of armed men, to the great alarm of all the citizens; he carried off the quatuorviri, “The highest magistrates of a colonia were the decemviri or quatuorviri, so called as the numbers might vary, whose functions may be compared with those of the consulate at Rome, before the establishment of the praetorship. Their principal duties were the administration of justice.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 259, v. Colonia. whom the citizens of that municipality had elected; he said that he and three others had been appointed by Sulla; and he said that he received orders from him to take care that that Aurius who had threatened him with prosecution and with danger to his life, and the other Aurius, and Caius Aurius his son, and Sextus Vibius, whom he was said to have employed as his agent in corrupting the man who had given the information, were proscribed and put to death. Accordingly, when they had been most cruelly murdered, the rest were ale thrown into no slight fear of proscription and death by that circumstance. When these things had been made manifest at the trial, who is there who can think it possible that he should have been acquitted? And these things are trifles. Listen to what follows, and you will wonder, not that Oppianicus was at last condemned, but that he remained for some time in safety.