ne Metella,
whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends
the defence was no doubt managed. "You have my farms," he is made to say
by his advocate; "I live on the charity of another. I abandon everything
because I am placid by nature, and because it must be so. My house,
which is closed to me, is open to you: I endure it. You have possessed
yourself of my whole establishment; I have not one single slave. I
suffer all this, and feel that I must suffer it. What do you want more?
Why do you persecute me further? In what do you think that I shall hurt
you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I oppose you? Is it your
wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You have your plunder. If
for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose
land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[65] Of
all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as
little as we please. Cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an
acquittal. But the argument shows that no overt act in quest of
restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless, Chrysogonus feared such
action, and had arranged with the two Tituses that something should be
done to prevent it. What are we to think of the condition of a city in
which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from
supper--that, indeed, might happen in London if there existed the means
of getting at the man's money when the man was dead--but in which such a
plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated?
"We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that
his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are interfering--these
Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son who is the natural
heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The courts of law, which
have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription,
disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a
man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let us get him convicted,
and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the
river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the
punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb us." It must have
thus been that the plot was arranged.

It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less was
it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance of
many. Erucius