o
question my accuser's slaves. They will not deny that this boy is of
revolting appearance, that his body is rotten through and through with
disease, that he is liable to fits, and is a barbarian and a
clodhopper. This is indeed a handsome boy whom you have selected as
one who might fairly be produced at the offering of sacrifice, whom
one might touch upon the head and clothe in a fair white cloak in
expectation of some prophetic reply from his lips. I only wish he were
present. I would have entrusted him to your tender mercies,
Aemilianus, and would be ready to hold him myself that you might
question him. Here in open court before the judges he would have
rolled his wild eyes upon you, he would have foamed at the mouth, spat
in your face, drawn in his hands convulsively, shaken his head and
fallen at last in a fit into your arms.

45. Here are fourteen slaves whom you bade me produce in court. Why do
you refuse to question them? You want one epileptic boy who, you know
as well as I, has long been absent from Oea. What clearer evidence of
the falseness of your accusations could be desired? Fourteen slaves
are present, as you required; you ignore them. One young boy is
absent: you concentrate your attack on him. What is it that you want?
Suppose Thallus were present. Do you want to prove that he had a fit
in my presence? Why, I myself admit it. You say that this was the
result of incantation. I answer that the boy knows nothing about it,
and that I can prove that it was not so. Even you will not deny that
Thallus was epileptic. Why then attribute his fall to magic rather
than disease? Was there anything improbable in his suffering that fate
in _my_ presence, which he has often suffered on other occasions in
the presence of a number of persons? Nay, even supposing I had thought
it a great achievement to cast an epileptic into a fit, why should I
use charms when, as I am told by writers on natural history, the
burning of the stone named _gagates_ is an equally sure and easy proof
of the disease? For its scent is commonly used as a test of the
soundness or infirmity of slaves even in the slave-market. Again, the
spinning of a potter's wheel will easily infect a man suffering from
this disease with its own giddiness. For the sight of its rotations
weakens his already feeble mind, and the potter is far more effective
than the magician for casting epileptics into convulsions. You had no
reason for demanding that I should pro