Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Have you, then, dared to separate him from you,

Or enter Salamis without your brother?

And dreaded not your father's countenance?

He never uttered the word 'countenance' but Telamon seemed to me to be distracted with rage and grief for his son. And how, lowering his voice to a tone of sorrow, did he appear to weep and bewail, as he exclaimed,

Whom childless now in the decline of life

You have afflicted, and bereaved, and killed;

Regardless of your brother's death, regardless

Of his young son entrusted to your keeping!

And if even the player who pronounced these verses every day, could not yet pronounce them efficiently without a feeling of real grief, can you suppose that Pacuvius, when he wrote them, was in a cool and tranquil state of mind? Such could not be the case; for I have often heard that no man can be a good poet (as they say is left recorded in the writings of both Democritus and Plato) without ardour of imagination, and the excitement of something similar to frenzy.

"Do not therefore imagine that I, who had no desire to imitate or represent the calamities or fictitious sorrows of the heroes of antiquity in my speech, and was no actor of a foreign and personated part, but a supporter of my own, when Manius Aquilius, by my efforts, was to be maintained in his rights as a citizen, did that which I did in the peroration of that case, without a strong feeling. For when I saw him whom I remembered to have been consul, and, as a general honoured by the senate, to have marched up to the Capitol with the pomp of an ovation, afflicted, dejected, sorrowful, reduced to the last extremity of danger, I no sooner attempted to excite compassion in others, than I was myself moved with compassion. I observed, indeed, that the judges were wonderfully moved, when I brought forward the sorrowful old man in mourning clothes, and did what you, Crassus, commend, not with art (of which I know not what to say), but with great concern and emotion of mind, so that I tore open his garment and showed his scars; when Gaius Marius, who was present and sat by, heightened the sorrow expressed in my speech by his tears; and when I, frequently calling upon him, recommended his colleague to his protection, and invoked him as an advocate to defend the common fortune of commanders. This excitement of compassion, this invocation of all gods and men, of citizens and allies, was accompanied by tears and extreme pity on my part; and if, from all the expressions which I then used, real concern of my own had been absent, my speech would not only have failed to excite commiseration, but would have even deserved ridicule. I, therefore, instruct you in these particulars, Sulpicius, I that am, of course, so skilful and so learned a master, showing you how, in speaking, you may be angry, and sorrowful, and weep.

"Though why, indeed, should I teach you this, who, in accusing my quaestor and companion in office, 14raised so fierce a flame, not only by your speech, but much more by your vehemence, passion, and fiery spirit, that I could scarce venture to approach to extinguish it? For you had in that case everything in your favour; you brought before the judges violence, flight, pelting with stones, the cruel exercise of the tribunician power in the grievous and miserable calamity of Caepio; it also appeared that Marcus Aemilius, the first man { princeps }, not only in the senate, but in the city, had been struck with one of the stones; and nobody could deny that Lucius Cotta and Titus Didius, when they would have interposed their veto upon the passing of the law, had been driven in a violent manner from the temple.

"There was also this circumstance in your favour - that you, being merely a youth, were thought to make these complaints on behalf of the commonwealth with the utmost propriety; I, a man of censorian rank, was thought hardly in a condition to appear with any honour in defence of a seditious citizen, a man who had been unrelenting to the distress of a consular person. The judges were citizens of the highest character; the forum was crowded with respectable people, so that scarcely even a slight excuse was allowed me, although I was to speak in defence of one who had been my quaestor. In these circumstances why need I say that I had recourse to some degree of art? I will state how I acted, and, if you please, you may place my defence under some head of art. I noticed, in connection, the natures, ill effects, and dangers of every kind of sedition. I brought down my discourse on that subject through all the changes of circumstances in our commonwealth; and I concluded by observing, that though seditions had always been accompanied by troubles, yet that some had been supported by justice, and almost by necessity. I then dwelt on those topics which Crassus just now mentioned, that neither could kings have been expelled from this city, nor tribunes of the people have been created, nor the consular power have been so often diminished by votes of the populace, nor the right of appeal, that patroness of the state and guardian of our liberty, have been granted to the Roman people, without disputes against the nobility; and if those seditions had been of advantage to the republic, it should not immediately, if any commotion had been raised among the people, be held against Gaius Norbanus as a heinous crime or serious misdemeanour; but that, if it had ever been allowed to the people of Rome to appear justly provoked (and I showed that it had been often allowed), no occasion was ever more just than that of which I was speaking. I then gave another turn to my speech, and directed it to the condemnation of Caepio's flight, and lamentation for the loss of the army. By this diversion I made the grief to flow afresh of those who were mourning for their friends, and re-excited the minds of the Roman knights before whom, as judges, the case was being pleaded, to hatred towards Quintus Caepio, from whom they were already alienated on account of the right of jury membership. 15

"But as soon as I perceived that I was possessed the favour of the court, and that I had secured ground for defence, because I had both conciliated the good feeling of the people, whose rights I had maintained even in conjunction with sedition, and had brought over the whole feeling of the judges to our side of the question, either from their concern for the calamity of the public, or from grief or regret for their relations, or from their own individual aversion to Caepio, I then began to intermix with this vehement and ardent style of oratory that other species of which I discoursed before, full of lenity and mildness; saying that I was contending for my companion in office, who, according to the custom of our ancestors, ought to stand in relation to me as one of my children, and for almost my whole reputation and fortunes; that nothing could possibly happen more dishonourable to my character, or more bitterly adapted to give pain to me, than if I, who was reputed to have been oftentimes the preservation of those who were entire strangers to me, but yet my fellow-citizens, should not be able to assist an officer of my own. I requested of the judges to make this concession to my age, to the honours which I had attained, to the actions which I had performed, if they saw that I was affected with a just and tender sorrow, and especially if they were aware that in other cases I had asked everything for my friends in peril, but never anything for myself. Thus, in the whole of that defence and case, the part which seemed to depend on art, the speaking on the Apuleian Law, and explaining what it was to commit treason, I skimmed and touched upon as briefly as possible. But by the aid of these two parts of eloquence, to one of which belongs the excitement of the passions, to the other recommendation to favour, (parts not at all fully treated in the rules in books on the art,) was the whole of that case conducted by me; so that, in reviving the popular displeasure against Caepio, I appeared to be a person of the keenest acrimony; and, in speaking of my behaviour towards my friends, to be of the most humane disposition. In this manner, rather by exciting the passions of the judges than by informing their understandings, was your accusation, Sulpicius, at that time overthrown by me."