For A. Cluentius (91-95)

He sought a fine. According to what law? Because he had not taken the oath to observe the law: a thing which never yet was brought against any man as a crime: and because Caius Verres, the city praetor, a very conscientious and careful man, had not the list out of which judges were to be chosen in the place of those who had been rejected, in that book which was then produced full of erasures. On all these accounts Caius Junius was condemned, O judges, for these trivial and unproved reasons, which had no business to have been ever brought before the court at all. And therefore he was defeated, not on the merits of his case, but by the time.

What, then, is the reason why our defence is listened to with such silence now, but that all opportunity of defending himself was refused to Junius then? Because at that time there was nothing in the cause but envy, mistake, suspicion, daily assemblies, seditiously stirred up by appeals to popular feeling. The same tribune of the people was the accuser before the assemblies, and the prosecutor in the courts of law. Be came into the court of justice not from the, assembly, but bringing the whole assembly with him. Those steps of Aurelius, [*] which were new at that time, appeared as if they had been built on purpose for a theatre for the display of that tribunal. And when the prosecutor had filled them with men in a state of great excitement, there was not only no opportunity of speaking in favour of the defendant, but none of even rising up to speak.

It happened lately, before Caius Orchinius, my colleague, that the judges refused to sanction a prosecution against Faustus Sulla, in a cause concerning some money which remained unpaid. Not because they considered that Sulla was an outlaw, or because they thought the cause of the public money insignificant or contemptible; but because, when a tribune of the people was the accuser, they did not think that there could be a fair trial. What? Shall I compare Sulla with Junius? or this tribune of the people with Quinctius? or one time with the other time? Sulla, with his great wealth, his numerous relations, connections, friends, and clients; but in the case of Junius all these things were small, and insignificant, and collected and acquired by his own exertions. The one a tribune of the people, moderate, modest, not only not seditious himself, but an enemy to seditious men; the other bitter, fond of raking up accusations, a hunter after popularity, and a turbulent man. The present a tranquil and a peaceable time; the former time one ruffled with every imaginable storm of ill-will. And as all this was the case, still in the case of Faustus those judges decided that a defendant was brought before the court on very unfair terms, when his adversary was in possession of the greatest power known to the state, which he could avail himself of to add force to his accusations.