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 This is quite untranslatable; it is a set of puns.
 Gutta is the name of one judge, Bulbus of another; but gutta 
 also means a drop, and bulbus means an onion. He sprinkles a
 drop on this onion, or he pours water on the onion to boil it. 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 report had reached the bench, that there was mention made of corruption being practiced
 among the judges;—the matter had not been kept as secret as it ought to have been, and yet was
 not so thoroughly detected as it was desirable that it should be for the sake of the republic.
 While the matter was so obscure, and every one in such doubt, on a sudden Canutius, a very
 clever man, and who had got some suspicion that Stalenus had been tampered with, but who thought
 that the business was not definitively settled, determined to set sentence pronounced. The
 judges said that they were willing. And at that time Oppianicus himself was in no great alarm.
 He thought that the whole business had been settled by Stalenus. 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. 
 Behold now—the lots were drawn with such a result that Bulbus, Stalenus, and Gutta were the
 first who were, to deliver their opinions. There was the greatest anxiety on the part of every
 one to see what vote would be given by these worthless and corrupt judges. And they all condemn
 him without the slightest hesitation.