with what indifference to my
own peril I maintained the innocence of its members, one and all. Thou
knowest that what I say is the truth, and that I have never boasted of
my good deeds in a spirit of self-praise. For whenever a man by
proclaiming his good deeds receives the recompense of fame, he
diminishes in a measure the secret reward of a good conscience. What
issues have overtaken my innocency thou seest. Instead of reaping the
rewards of true virtue, I undergo the penalties of a guilt falsely laid
to my charge--nay, more than this; never did an open confession of guilt
cause such unanimous severity among the assessors, but that some
consideration, either of the mere frailty of human nature, or of
fortune's universal instability, availed to soften the verdict of some
few. Had I been accused of a design to fire the temples, to slaughter
the priests with impious sword, of plotting the massacre of all honest
men, I should yet have been produced in court, and only punished on due
confession or conviction. Now for my too great zeal towards the senate I
have been condemned to outlawry and death, unheard and undefended, at a
distance of near five hundred miles away.[C] Oh, my judges, well do ye
deserve that no one should hereafter be convicted of a fault like mine!

'Yet even my very accusers saw how honourable was the charge they
brought against me, and, in order to overlay it with some shadow of
guilt, they falsely asserted that in the pursuit of my ambition I had
stained my conscience with sacrilegious acts. And yet thy spirit,
indwelling in me, had driven from the chamber of my soul all lust of
earthly success, and with thine eye ever upon me, there could be no
place left for sacrilege. For thou didst daily repeat in my ear and
instil into my mind the Pythagorean maxim, "Follow after God." It was
not likely, then, that I should covet the assistance of the vilest
spirits, when thou wert moulding me to such an excellence as should
conform me to the likeness of God. Again, the innocency of the inner
sanctuary of my home, the company of friends of the highest probity, a
father-in-law revered at once for his pure character and his active
beneficence, shield me from the very suspicion of sacrilege.
Yet--atrocious as it is--they even draw credence for this charge from
_thee_; I am like to be thought implicated in wickedness on this very
account, that I am imbued with _thy_ teachings and stablished in _thy_
ways. So it is no