hey supped, and said
that they would sleep together. Having supped they went to bed; when the
landlord--for this was told after it had all been found out, and he had
been taken for another offence--having perceived that one man had money,
in the middle of the night, knowing how sound they would sleep from
fatigue, crept up to them, and having taken out of its scabbard the
sword of him that was without the money as it lay by his side, he killed
the other man, put back the sword, and then went to his bed. But he
whose sword had been used rose long before daylight and called loudly to
his companion. Finding that the man slumbered too heavily to be stirred,
he took himself and his sword and the other things he had brought away
with him and started alone. But the landlord soon raised the
hue-and-cry, 'A man has been killed!' and, with some of the guests,
followed him who had gone off. They took the man on the road, and
dragged his sword out of its sheath, which they found all bloody. They
carried him back to the city, and he was accused." In this cause there
is the declaration of the crime alleged, "You killed the man." There is
the defence, "I did not kill him." Thence arises the issue. The question
to be judged is one of conjecture. "Did he kill him?"[241] We may judge
from the story that the case was not one which had occurred in life, but
had been made up. The truculent landlord creeping in and finding that
everything was as he wished it; and the moneyless man going off in the
dark, leaving his dead bedfellow behind him--as the landlord had
intended that he should--form all the incidents of a stock piece for
rehearsal rather than the occurrence of a true murder. The same may be
said of other examples adduced, here as afterward, by Quintilian. They
are well-known cases, and had probably been handed down from one student
to another. They tell us more of the manners of the people than of the
rudiments of their law.

From this may be seen the nature of the work. From thence we skip over
thirty years and come at once to B.C. 55. The days of the Triumvirate
had come, and the quarrel with Clodius--of Cicero's exile and his
return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of
his anger, against his enemies. And all this had taken place since those
halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to
be Quaestor, AEdile, Praetor, and Consul. He had first succeeded as a
public man, and then, hav