ch is in the advocate's best style. The
trial, it seems, took place on a public holiday, when it was not usual to
take any cause unless it were of pressing importance.

"If any spectator be here present, gentlemen, who knows nothing of our
laws, our courts of justice, or our national customs, he will not fail to
wonder what can be the atrocious nature of this case, that on a day of
national festival and public holiday like this, when all other business in
the Forum is suspended, this single trial should be going on; and he will
entertain no doubt but that the accused is charged with a crime of
such enormity, that if it were not at once taken cognisance of, the
constitution itself would be in peril. And if he heard that there was a
law which enjoined that in the case of seditious and disloyal citizens who
should take up arms to attack the Senate-house, or use violence against
the magistrates, or levy war against the commonwealth, inquisition into
the matter should be made at once, on the very day;--he would not find
fault with such a law: he would only ask the nature of the charge. But
when he heard that it was no such atrocious crime, no treasonable attempt,
no violent outrage, which formed the subject of this trial, but that a
young man of brilliant abilities, hard-working in public life, and of
popular character, was here accused by the son of a man whom he had
himself once prosecuted, and was still prosecuting, and that all a bad
woman's wealth and influence was being used against him,--he might take no
exception to the filial zeal of Atratinus; but he would surely say that
woman's infamous revenge should be baffled and punished.... I can excuse
Atratinus; as to the other parties, they deserve neither excuse nor
forbearance".

It was a strange story, the case for the prosecution, especially as
regarded the alleged attempt to poison Clodia. The poison was given to a
friend of Caelius, he was to give it to some slaves of Clodia whom he was
to meet at certain baths frequented by her, and they were in some way to
administer it. But the slaves betrayed the secret; and the lady employed
certain gay and profligate young men, who were hangers-on of her own,
to conceal themselves somewhere in the baths, and pounce upon Caelius's
emissary with the poison in his possession. But this scheme was said
to have failed. Clodia's detectives had rushed from their place of
concealment too soon, and the bearer of the poison escaped. The