For A. Cluentius (81-85)

Wherefore, all party feeling being now out of the question, for time has removed that, my oration has begged you to dismiss it from your minds, and your good faith and justice has discarded it from an inquiry into truth; it is there besides in the cause that remains in doubt?

Oh, but Stalenus was not commissioned to corrupt the judges by Oppianicus, but by Cluentius. Why, when the judges were retiring to deliberate, did Cluentius and Canutius allow him to go away? Why, when they were going to give their votes, did they not require the presence of Stalenus the judge, to whom they had given the money Oppianicus did not for him; Quinctius did demand his presence. The tribunitian power was interposed to prevent a decision being come to without Stalenus. But he condemned him. To be sure, for he had given this condemnatory vote as a sort of pledge to Bulbus and the rest to prove that he had been cheated by Oppianicus. If, therefore, on one side, there is a reason for corrupting the tribunal; on one side, money; on one side, Stalenus; on one side, every description of fraud and audacity: and on the other side, modesty, an honourable life, and no suspicion of corruption, and no object in corrupting the tribunal; allow, now that the truth is made clear and all error dispelled, the discredit of that baseness to adhere to that side to which all the other wickednesses are attached; and allow the odium of it to depart at last from that man, whom you do not perceive to have ever been connected with any fault.

For you can recollect that this was what men said at the time; that Cethegus, because he hated the man and because he wished to get rid of such rascality out of the republic, and because he saw that he who had confessed that, while a judge, he had secretly and irregularly taken money from a defendant, could not possibly get off, had given him treacherous advice. If Cethegus behaved dishonestly in this matter, he appears to me to have wished to get rid of an adversary; but if the case was such that Stalenus could not possibly deny that he had received the money, (and nothing could be more dangerous or more disgraceful than to confess for what purpose he had received it,) the advice of Cethegus is not to be blamed.