Aulus Cluentius is said to have corrupted a tribunal with money, in order to procure the condemnation of his innocent enemy, Statius Albius. I will prove, O judges, in the first place, (since that is the principal wickedness charged against him, and the chief pretext for casting odium upon him, that an innocent man was condemned through the influence of in your minds whether I have money,) that no one was ever brought before a court on heavier charges, or with more unimpeachable witnesses against him to prove them. In the second place, that a previous examination into the matter had been made by the very same judges who afterwards condemned him, with such a result that he could not possibly have been acquitted, not only by them, but by any other imaginable tribunal. When I have demonstrated this, then I will prove that point which I am aware is particularly indispensable, that that tribunal was indeed tampered with, not by Cluentius, but by the party hostile to Cluentius; and I will enable you to see clearly in the whole of that cause what the facts really were—what mistake gave rise to—and what had its origin in the unpopularity undeservedly stirred up against Cluentius.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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