Do not think, O judges, that they, who are now starting fresh who have not as yet arrived at honours, are not looking anxiously for the result of this trial. If the exceeding affection of Lucius Flaccus for all good men, and his great devotion to the republic turns out an injury to him, who do you expect will in future be so insane, as not to think that path of life which he has hitherto been accustomed to consider slippery and dangerous preferable to this level and steady one? But if you, O judges, are tired of such citizens declare it; those who can will change their opinions, those who have their path still to choose will soon make up their minds what to do we who have advanced as far as we have must bear this result of our rashness. If you wish as many as possible to be of this opinion, you will declare by this decision what your sentiments are.

By your decision in this case, O judges, you will give this unhappy suppliant to you and to your children—precepts by which to regulate his life. If you preserve his father to him, you will prescribe to him what sort of citizen he himself ought to be. If you take his father from him, you will show that there is no reward held out by you to virtuous and wise and consistent conduct. And he now, (since he is of that age that he is able to feel for his father's agony, but not yet to be any assistance to his father in his dangers,) he, I say, entreats you not to add his father's tears to his sorrow, or his weeping to his father's misery. He fixes his eyes on me also, he implores me by his looks, he, as I may say, appeals to my good faith, and claims of me that honour for his father which I once promised him in return for the safety of his country. Pity his family, O judges; pity that most gallant father; pity the son: preserve to the republic that most noble and glorious name, either for the sake of the blood, or of the antiquity of the family, or else for the sake of the individual.