How I wish that Lucius Volusienus were not absent from my client's trial, a man of the greatest virtue and most exalted character! How I wish that I could say that Publius Helvidius Rufus was present, the most accomplished of all the Roman knights! who, while, in this man's cause, he was kept awake night and day, and while he was instructing me in many of the facts of this case, has been stricken with a severe and dangerous illness; but even while in this state of suffering, he is not less anxious for the acquittal of Cluentius than for his own recovery. You shall witness the equal zeal of Cnaeus Tudicius, a senator, a most virtuous and honour able man, shown both in giving evidence and in uttering an encomium on him. We speak with the same hope, but with more diffidence, of you, O Publius Volumnius, since you are one of the judges of Aulus Cluentius. [199] In short, we assert to you that the good-will of all his neighbours towards this man is unequalled. His mother alone opposes the zeal of all these men, and their anxiety and diligence in his behalf, and my labour, who, according to the rules of old times, have pleaded the whole of this cause by myself, and also your equity, O judges, and your merciful dispositions. But what a mother! One whom you see hurried on, blinded by cruelty and wickedness,—whose desires no amount of infamy has ever restrained,—who, by the vices of her mind, has perverted all the laws of men to the foulest purposes,—whose folly is such, that no one can call her a human being,—whose violence is such, that no one can call her a woman,—whose barbarity is such, that no one can call her a mother. And she has changed even the names of relationships, and not only the name and laws of nature: the wife of her son-in-law, the mother-in-law of her son, the invader of her daughter's bed! she has come to such a pitch, that she has no resemblance, except in form, to a human creature.
[200] Wherefore, O judges, if you hate wickedness, prevent the approach of a mother to a son's blood; inflict on the parent this incredible misery, of the victory and safety of her children; allow the mother (that she may not rejoice at being deprived of her son) to depart defeated rather by your equity. But if, as your nature requires, you love modesty, and beneficence, and virtue, then at last raise up this your suppliant, O judges, who has been exposed for so many years to undeserved odium and danger,—who now for the first time, since the beginning of that fire kindled by the actions and fanned by the desires of others, has begun to raise his spirits from the hope of your equity, and to breathe awhile after the alarms he has suffered,—all whose hopes depend on you,—whom many, indeed, wish to be saved, but whom you alone have the power to save. [201] Habitus prays to you, O judges, and with tears implores you, not to abandon him to odium, which ought to have no power in courts of justice; nor to his mother, whose vows and prayers you are bound to reject from your minds; nor to Oppianicus, that infamous man, already condemned and dead.
