eep
you informed of people's names--although, I admit, Crassus is better
known to the keepers of taverns--yet ask them, I say, whether they
have ever seen Junius Crassus, a citizen of Oea, in this place. They
will answer 'yes'. Let Aemilianus then produce this most admirable
young man on whose testimony he relies. You notice the time of day. I
tell you that Crassus has long since been snoring in a drunken slumber
or has taken a second bathe and is now evaporating the sweat of
intoxication at the bath that he may be equal to a fresh drinking bout
after supper. He presents himself in writing only. That is the way he
speaks to you, Maximus. Even he is not so dead to sense of shame as to
be able to lie to your face without a blush. But there is perhaps
another reason for his absence. He may have been unable to abstain
from the wine-cup[17] sufficiently long to keep sober against this
moment; or it may be that Aemilianus took good care not to subject him
to your severe and searching gaze, lest you should damn the brute with
his close-shaven cheeks and his disgusting appearance by a mere glance
at his face, when you saw a young man with his features stripped of
the beard and hair that should adorn them, his eyes heavy with wine,
his lids swollen, his broad[18] grin, his slobbering lips, his harsh
voice, his trembling hands, his breath[19] reeking of the cook-shop.
He has long since devoured his fortune; nothing is left him of his
patrimony save a house that serves him for the sale of his false
witness, and never did he make a more remunerative contract than he
has done with regard to this evidence he offers to-day. For he sold
Aemilianus his drunken fictions for 3,000 sesterces, as every one at
Oea is aware.

[Footnote 17: _a bria_ (Hildebrand).]

[Footnote 18: _rictum diductum_ (Jahn).]

[Footnote 19: _ructus popinam_ (Pricaeus).]

60. We all knew of this before it actually took place. I might have
prevented the transaction by denouncing it, but I knew that so foolish
a lie would be prejudicial to Aemilianus, who wasted his money to
secure it, rather than to myself, who treated it with the contempt it
deserved. I wished not only that Aemilianus should lose his money, but
that Crassus should have his reputation ruined by his disgraceful
perjury. It was but the day before yesterday that the transaction took
place in the most open manner at the house of Rufinus, of whom I shall
soon have something to say. Rufinus and Calpu