For A. Cluentius (71-75)

He adopts this plan,—he promises some of the most insignificant of the judges some money; then he keeps it back, hoping by this means (as he thought that the respectable men would, of their own accord, judge with impartiality) to make those who were less esteemed furious against Oppianicus on account of their disappointment. Therefore, as he had always been a blundering and a perverse fellow, he begins with Bulbus, and finding him sulky and yawning because he had got nothing for a long time, he gives him a gentle spur. “What will you do,” says he, “will you help me, O Bulbus, so that we need not serve the republic for nothing?” But he, as soon as he heard this—“For nothing,” said he, “I will follow whenever you like. But what have you got?” Then he promises him forty thousand sesterces if Oppianicus is acquitted. And he begs him to summon the rest of those with whom he is accustomed to converse, and he, the contriver of the whole business, adds Gutta [*] to Bulbus.

Therefore, he did not seem at all bitter after the taste he had had of his discourse. One or two days passed, when the matter appeared somewhat doubtful. He wanted the agent and some security for the money. Then Bulbus addresses the man with a cheerful countenance, as caressingly as he can “What will you do,” says he, “O Paetus?” (For Stalenus had chosen this surname for himself from the images of the Aelii, lest if he called himself Ligur, he should seem to be using the name of his nation rather than that of his family.) “Men are asking me where the money is about which you talked to me.” On this that most manifest rogue, fed on gains acquired by tampering with the courts of justice, as he had now all his hopes and all his heart set upon that sum of money which he had got in his house, begins to frown. (Recollect his face, and the expression that you have seen him put on.) He complains that he has been thrown out by Oppianicus; and he, a man wholly made up of fraud and lies, and who had even improved those vices which he had by nature, by careful study, and by a regular sort of system of wickedness, declares positively that he has been cheated by Oppianicus; and he adds this assertion,—that he will be condemned by the vote which in his case every one was to give openly.

The judges who were to deliberate on the case were thirty-two in number: an acquittal would be obtained by the votes of sixteen of them. Forty thousand sesterces given to each judge ought to make up that number of votes, and then the vote of Stalenus himself, who would be induced by the hope of a greater reward still, would crown the whole, making the seventeenth. And it happened by chance, because the matter was concluded in this way on a sudden, that Stalenus himself was not present. He was acting as counsel for the defence in some cause or other before a judge. Habitus did not mind that, nor did Canutius. But Oppianicus and his patron Lucius Quinctius were not so well pleased; and as Lucius Quinctius was at that time a tribune of the people, he reproached Caius Junius the judge most bitterly, and insisted upon it that they should not deliberate on their decision without the presence of Stalenus, and as they appeared to be purposely rather careless in communicating with him on the subject by means of the lictors, he himself went out of the criminal court into the civil court, where Stalenus was engaged, and, as he had the power to do, adjourned that court, and himself brought Stalenus back to the bench.

The judges rise to give decisions, when Oppianicus said, as he had at that time a right to do, that he wished the votes to be given openly; his object being that Stalenus might know what was to be paid to each judge. There were different kinds of judges, a few were bribed, but all were unfavorable. As men who are accustomed to receive bribes in the Campus Martius are usually exceedingly hostile to those candidates whose money they think is kept back, so the judges of the same sort were then very indignant against this defendant. The others considered him very guilty, but they waited for the votes of those who they thought had been bribed, that by seeing their votes they might judge who it was that they had been bribed by.