with the door wide open, they were acquitted.  It was thought incredible that men who had just committed so monstrous a crime could possibly sleep.  Why, Solon, the wisest of all legislators, drawing up his code of laws, provided no punishment for this crime; and when he was asked the reason replied that he believed that no one would ever commit it.  To provide a punishment would be to suggest rather than prevent.  Our own ancestors provided indeed a punishment, but it was of the strangest kind, showing how strange, how monstrous they thought the crime.  And what evidence do you bring forward?  The man was not at Rome.  That is proved.  There-fore he must have done it, if he did it at all, by the hands of others.  Who were these others?  Were they free men or slaves?  If they were free men where did they come from, where live?  How did he hire them?  Where is the proof?  You haven’t a shred of evidence, and yet you accuse him of parricide.  And if they were slaves, where, again I ask, are they?  There were two slaves who saw the deed; but they belonged to the confederate not to the accused.  Why do you not produce them?  Purely because they would prove your guilt.

“It is there indeed that we find the real truth of the matter.  It was the maxim of a famous lawyer, Ask:  who profited by the deed?  I ask it now.  It was Magnus who profited.  He was poor before, and now he is rich.  And then he was in Rome at the time of the murder; and he was familiar with assassins.  Remember too the strange speed with which he sent the news to Ameria, and sent it, not to the son, as one might expect, but to Capito his accomplice; for that he was an accomplice is evident enough.  What else could he be when he so cheated the deputation that went to Sulla at Volaterrae?”

Cicero then turned to Chrysogonus, and attacked him with a boldness which is surprising, when we remember how high he stood in the favor of the absolute master of Rome, “See how he comes down from his fine mansion on the Palatine.  Yes, and he has for his own enjoyment a delightful retreat in the suburbs, and many an estate besides, and not one of them but is both handsome and conveniently near.  His house is crowded with ware of Corinth and Delos, among them that famous self-acting cooking apparatus, which he lately bought at a price so high that the passers-by, when they heard the clerk call out the highest bid, supposed that it must be a farm which was being sold.  And what quantities, think you, he has of embossed plate, and coverlets of purple, and pictures, and statues, and colored marbles!  Such quantities, I tell you, as scarce could be piled together in one mansion in a time of tumult and rapine from many wealthy establishments.  And his household—­why should I describe how many it numbers, and how varied are its accomplishments?  I do not speak of ordinary domestics, the cook, the baker, the litter-bearer.  Why, for the mere enjoyment of his ears he has such