udatory terms: the jurymen are
complimented: the magistrates are commissioned to carry it out: no one
thought that the fellow would venture on a defence. "Tell me, ye Muses,
now how first the fire befell!"[100] You know Bald-head, the Nanneian
millionaire,[101] that panegyrist of mine, whose complimentary oration
I have already mentioned to you in a letter. In two days' time, by the
agency of a single slave, and one, too, from a school of gladiators, he
settled the whole business--he summoned them to an interview, made a
promise, offered security, paid money down. Still farther, good heavens,
what a scandal! even favours from certain ladies, and introductions to
young men of rank, were thrown in as a kind of _pourboire_ to some of
the jurors. Accordingly, with the loyalists holding completely aloof,
with the forum full of slaves, twenty-five jurors were yet found so
courageous that, though at the risk of their lives, they preferred even
death to producing universal ruin. There were thirty-one who were more
influenced by famine than fame. On seeing one of these latter Catulus
said to him, "Why did you ask us for a guard? Did you fear being robbed
of the money?" There you have, as briefly as I could put it, the nature
of the trial and the cause of the acquittal.

Next you want to know the present state of public affairs and of my own.
That settlement of the Republic--firmly established by my wisdom, as you
thought, as I thought by God's--which seemed fixed on a sure foundation
by the unanimity of all loyalists and the influence of my
consulship--that I assure you, unless some God take compassion on us,
has by this one verdict escaped from our grasp: if "verdict" it is to be
called, when thirty of the most worthless and dissolute fellows in Rome
for a paltry sum of money obliterate every principle of law and justice,
and when that which every man--I had almost said every animal--knows to
have taken place, a Thalna, a Plautus, and a Spongia, and other scum of
that sort decide not to have taken place. However, to console you as to
the state of the Republic, rascaldom is not as cheerful and exultant in
its victory as the disloyal hoped after the infliction of such a wound
upon the Republic. For they fully expected that when religion, morality,
the honour of juries, and the prestige of the senate had sustained such
a crushing fall, victorious profligacy and lawless lust would openly
exact vengeance from all the best men for the