Learn now this, which has a reference to your oath, which belongs to your tribunal, which is a burden the law has imposed on you, in accordance with which you have assembled here,—the law, I mean, about accusations of poison; so that all may understand in how few words this cause may be summed up, and how many things have been said by me which had a great deal to do with the inclination of my client, but very little with your decision.
[165] It has been urged in the case for the prosecution, that Caius Vibius Capax was taken off by poison by this Aulus Cluentius. It happens very seasonably that a man is present, endowed with the greatest good faith, and with every virtue, Lucius Plaetorius, a senator, who was connected by ties of hospitality with, and was an intimate friend of that man Capax. He used to live with him at Rome; it was in his house that he was taken in, in his house that he died. “But Cluentius is his heir.” I say that he died without a will, and that the possession of his property was given by the praetor's edict to this man, his sister's son, a most virtuous young man, and one held in the highest esteem for honourable conduct, Numerius Cluentius, who is present in court. [166]
There is another poisoning charge. They say that poison was, by the contrivance of Habitus, prepared for this young Oppianicus, when, according to the custom of the citizens of Larinum, a large party was dining at his wedding feast; that, as it was being administered in mead, a man of the name of Balbutius, his intimate friend, intercepted it on its way, drank it, and died immediately. If I were to deal with this charge as one that required to be refuted, I should treat those matters at great length, which, as it is, my speech will pass over in a few words. [167] What has Habitus ever done that he is not to be thought a man incapable of such an atrocity as this? And what reason had he for being so exceedingly afraid of Oppianicus, when he could not possibly say a word in this case, and while accusers could not possibly be wanting, as long as his mother was alive? which you will soon have proved to you. Was it his object to have no sort of danger wanting to his cause, that this new crime was added to it? But what opportunity had he of giving him poison on that day, and in so large a company? Moreover, by whom was it given? Whence was it got? How, too, was the cup allowed to be intercepted? Why was not another given to him over again? There are many arguments which may be urged; but I still not appear to wish to urge them, and still not to do so. For the facts of the case shall speak for themselves. [168] I say that that young man, whom you say died the moment that he had drank that cup, did not die at all on that day. O great and impudent lie! Now see the rest of the truth. I say that he, having come to the dinner while labouring under an indigestion, and still, as people of that age often do, had not spared himself, was taken ill, continued ill some days, and so died. Who is my witness for this fact? The man who is a witness also of his own grief—his own father. The father, I say, of the young man himself: he, who, from his grief of mind, would have been easily inclined by even the slightest suspicion to appear as a witness against Aulus Cluentius, gives evidence in his favour. Read his evidence. But do you, unless it is too grievous for you, rise for a moment, and endure the pain which this necessary recollection of your trouble causes you; on which I will not dwell too long, since, as became a virtuous citizen, you have not allowed your own grief to be the cause of distress or of a false accusation to an innocent man. [The testimony of Balbutius the father is read.]
