Formerly, O judges, I had determined to conduct this cause in a different manner, thinking
that our adversaries would deny that their household was implicated in such a violent and
atrocious murder. Accordingly, I came with a mind free from care and anxiety, because I was
aware that I could easily prove that by witnesses. But now, when it has been confessed, not
only by that most honourable man, Lucius Quinctius,
but when Publius Fabius himself has not hesitated to admit the facts which are the
subject of this trial, I come forward to plead this cause in quite a different manner from
that in which I was originally prepared to argue it. For then my anxiety was to be able
to prove what I asserted had been done. Now all my speech is to be directed to this point, to
prevent our adversaries from being in a better position, merely because they have admitted
what they could not possibly deny though they greatly wished to do so.
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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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