charge of false
accusation. You, Maximus, with great acuteness saw through his designs
and ordered him to renew his original accusation in person. In spite
of his promise to comply, he cannot be induced to come to close
quarters, but actually defies your authority and continues to skirmish
at long range with his false accusations. He persistently shirks the
perilous task of a direct attack, and perseveres in his assumption of
the safe role of the accuser's legal representative. As a result, even
before the case came into court, the real nature of the accusation
became obvious to the meanest understanding. The man who invented the
charge and was the first to utter it had not the courage to take the
responsibility for it. Moreover the man in question is Sicinius
Aemilianus, who, if he had discovered any true charge against me,
would scarcely have been so backward in accusing a stranger of so many
serious crimes, seeing that he falsely asserted his own uncle's will
to be a forgery although he knew it to be genuine: indeed he
maintained this assertion with such obstinate violence, that even
after that distinguished senator, Lollius Urbicus, in accordance with
the decision of the distinguished consulars, his assessors, had
declared the will to be genuine and duly proven, he continued--such
was his mad fury--in defiance of the award given by the voice of that
most distinguished citizen, to assert with oaths that the will was a
forgery. It was only with difficulty that Lollius Urbicus refrained
from making him suffer for it.

[Footnote 6: I conjecture: _de morte cognati adolescentis subito
tacens tanti criminis descriptione destitit, ne tamen omnino desistere
calumnia magiam, &c._]

3. I rely, Maximus, on your sense of justice and on my own innocence,
but I hope that in this trial also we shall hear the voice of Lollius
raised impulsively in my defence; for Aemilianus is deliberately
accusing a man whom he knows to be innocent, a course which comes the
more easy to him, since, as I have told you, he has already been
convicted of lying in a most important case, heard before the Prefect
of the city. Just as a good man studiously avoids the repetition of a
sin once committed, so men of depraved character repeat their past
offence with increased confidence, and, I may add, the more often they
do so, the more openly they display their impudence. For honour is
like a garment; the older it gets, the more carelessly it is worn. I
t