they took a Dictator from the plow; when the men who made Rome what it is cultivated their own land, but did not covet the land of others.  ‘Ah! but,’ you say, ‘the father intended to disinherit him.’  Why?  ‘I cannot say.’  Did he disinherit him?  ‘No, he did not.’  Who stopped him?  ‘Well, he was thinking of it.’  To whom did he say so?  ’To no one.’  Surely,” cries Cicero, “this is to abuse the laws and justice and your dignity in the basest and most wanton way, to make charges which he not only cannot but does not even attempt to establish.”

Shortly after comes a lively description of the prosecutor’s demeanor.  “It was really worth while, if you observed, gentlemen, the man’s utter indifference as he was conducting his case.  I take it that when he saw who was sitting on these benches, he asked whether such an one or such an one was engaged for the defense.  Of me he never thought, for I had never spoken before in a criminal case.  When he found that none of the usual speakers were concerned in it, he became so careless that when the humor took him, he sat down, then walked about, sometimes called a servant, to give him orders, I suppose, for dinner, and certainly treated this court in which you are sitting as if it were an absolute solitude.  At last he brought his speech to an end.  I rose to reply.  He could be seen to breathe again that it was I and no one else.  I noticed, gentlemen, that he continued to laugh and be inattentive till I mentioned Chrysogonus.  As soon as I got to him my friend roused himself and was evidently astonished.  I saw what had touched him, and repeated the name a second time, and a third.  From that time men have never ceased to run briskly backwards and forwards, to tell Chrysogonus, I suppose, that there was some one in the country who ventured to oppose his pleasure, that the case was being pleaded otherwise than as he imagined it would be; that the sham sale of goods was being exposed, the confederacy grievously handled, his popularity and power disregarded, that the people were giving their whole attention to the cause, and that the common opinion was that the transaction generally was disgraceful.

“Then,” continued the speaker, “this charge of parricide, so monstrous is the crime, must have the very strongest evidence to support it.  There was a case at Tarracina of a man being found murdered in the chamber where he was sleeping, his two sons, both young men, being in the same room.  No one could be found, either slave or free man, who seemed likely to have done the deed; and as the two sons, grown up as they were, declared that they knew nothing about it, they were indicted for parricide.  What could be so suspicious?  Suspicious, do I say?  Nay, worse.  That neither knew any thing about it?  That any one had ventured into that chamber at the very time when there were in it two young men who would certainly perceive and defeat the attempt?  Yet, because it was proved to the jury that the young men had been found fast asleep,