M. Tullius Cicero, For Aulus Cluentius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

Caius Junius, who presided over that trial, has been condemned; add that also, if you please,—he was condemned at the time that he was a criminal judge. No relaxation of the prosecution or mitigation of the law was procured by the means of any one of the tribunes of the people. At a time that it was contrary to law for him to be taken away from the investigation of the case before him to discharge any duty to the republic whatever;—at that very time, I say, he was hurried off to the investigation. But to what investigation? For the expression of your countenances, O judges, invites me to say freely what I had thought I must have suppressed. [90] What shall I say? Was that then an investigation, or a discussion, or a decision? I will suppose it was. Let him, who wishes today to speak on the subject of the people having been excited, say whose wishes were at that time complied with; let him say on what account Junius gave his decision. Whomsoever you ask, you will get this answer;—Because he received money, because he unfairly crushed an innocent man. This is the common opinion. But if that were the truth, he ought to have been prosecuted under the same law as Habitus is impeached under. But he himself was carrying on an investigation according to that law. Quinctius would have waited a few days. But he was unwilling to accuse him as a private man, and when the odium of the business had been allayed. You see then that all the hope of the accuser was not in the cause itself, but in the time and in the influence of individuals. [91] 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.