26.
Here I, even if all the Crassi were to stand forth with all the Antonies, if you, O
Lucius Philippus, who flourished among those men, choose to plead this cause, with
Hortensius for your colleague, yet I must get the best of it. For everything does not
depend, as you two think it does, on eloquence. There is still some truth so manifest
that nothing can weaken it.
[81]
Did you, before you made
the demand to be allowed to take possession of his goods, send any one to take care that
the master should be driven by force off the estate by his own slaves? Choose whichever
you like; the one is incredible; the other abominable; and both are unheard-of before
this time. Do you mean that any one ran over seven hundred miles in two days? Tell me.
Do you deny it? Then you sent some one beforehand. I had rather you did. For if you were
to say that, you would be seen to tell an impudent lie: when you confess this, you admit
that you did a thing which you cannot conceal even by a lies. Will such a design, so
covetous, so audacious, so precipitate, be approved of by Aquillius and by such men as
he is?
[82]
What does this madness, what does this baste,
what does this precipitation intimate? Does it not prove violence? does it not prove
wickedness? does it not prove robbery? does it not, in short, prove everything rather
than right, than duty, or than modesty? You send some one without the command of the
praetor. With what intention? You knew he would order it. What then? When he had ordered
it, could you not have sent then? You were about to ask him. When? Thirty days after.
Yes, if nothing hindered you; if the same intention existed; if you were well; in short,
if you were alive. The praetor would have made the order, I suppose, if he chose, if he
was well, if he was in court, if no one objected, by giving security according to his
decree, and by being willing to stand a trial.
[83]
For,
by the immortal gods, if Alphenus, the agent of Publius Quinctius, were then willing to
give security and to stand a trial, and in short to do everything which you chose, what
would you do? Would you recall him whom you had sent into Gaul? But this man would have been already expelled from his farm,
already driven headlong from his home, already (the most unworthy thing of all)
assaulted by the hands of his own slaves, in obedience to your messenger and command.
You would, forsooth, make amends for these things afterwards. Do you dare to speak of
the life of any man, you who must admit this,—that you were so blinded by
covetousness and avarice, that, though you did not know what would happen afterwards,
but many things might happen, you placed your hope from a present crime in the uncertain
event of the future? And I say this, just as if, at that very time when the praetor had
ordered you to take possession according to his edict, you had sent any one to take
possession, you either ought to, or could have ejected Publius Quinctius from
possession.
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