M. Tullius Cicero, Orations: for his house, Plancius, Sextius, Coelius, Milo, Ligarius, etc. (ed. C. D. Yonge)

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THE SPEECH OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST PUBLIUS VATINIUS; CALLED ALSO, THE EXAMINATION OF PUBLIUS VATINIUS.

THE ARGUMENT.

This speech arose out of the preceding one. Vatinius was a partisan and creature of Caesar's and instigated by him to appear as a witness against Sestius on his trial and Cicero was so indignant at a man of so infamous a character appearing against his friend that be exposed the whole iniquity of his life by the severity of his examination and the searching nature of the questions which he put to him. And he says of this speech himself (Epist. Fam. i. 9): “The whole of my examination of him consisted of nothing but a reproof of his conduct in his tribuneship; and I spoke with great freedom, and the greatest earnestness and indignation.”

Vatinius had also, while replying to Cicero's questions, attacked Cicero himself as having been a turncoat, and being now anxious himself to curry favour with Caesar, because he saw that his affairs were becoming more prosperous than they had been, and reminded him of his having not always entertained a favourable opinion of Caesar; and Cicero replied, that he still preferred the condition of Bibulus's consulship to the triumphs and victories of any one whatever.

I. If, O Vatinius, I had chosen to regard merely what the unworthiness of your character deserved, I should have [p. 226] treated you in a way that would have been very pleasing to these men, and, as your evidence could not, on account of the infamy of your life and the scandal of your private conduct, be possibly considered of the slightest consequence, I should have dismissed you without saying a single word to you. For not one of these men considered it worth my while either to refute you, as if you were an adversary of any importance, or to question you, as if you were a scrupulous witness. But I was, perhaps, a little more intemperate just now than I should have been. For from detestation of you, in which, although, on account of your wicked conduct to me, I ought to go beyond all men, yet I am in fact surpassed by everybody, I was carried away so far, that though I did not despise you at all less than I detest you, still I chose to dismiss you in embarrassment and distress, rather than in contempt.

[2] Wherefore, that you may not wonder at my having paid you this compliment of putting questions to you, whom no one thinks worthy of being spoken to or visited, whom no one thinks deserving of a vote, or of the rights of a citizen, or even of the light of life; know that no motive would have induced me to do so, except that of repressing that ferocity of yours, and crushing your audacity, and checking your loquacity by entangling it in the few questions I should put to you. In truth, you ought, O Vatinius, even if you had become suspected by Publius Sestius undeservedly, still to pardon me, if, on the occasion of such great danger to a man who has done me such great services, I had yielded to the consideration of what his necessities required, and what his inclination deserved of me. [3] But you unintentionally showed a few moments ago that you spoke falsely in the evidence which you gave yesterday, when you asserted that you had never had the least conversation with Albinovanus, not only about the prosecution of Sestius, but about anything whatever; and yet you said just now that Titus Claudius had been in communication with you, and had asked your advice with respect to the conduct of the prosecution against Sestius, and that Albinovanus, who you had said before was hardly known to you, had come to your house, and had held a long conversation with you. And lastly, you said that you had given to Albinovanus the written harangues of Publius Sestius, which he had never had any knowledge of, and did not know [p. 227] where to find, and that they had been read at this trial. And by one of these statements you confessed that the accusers had been instructed and suborned by you; and by the other you confessed your own inconsistency, liable to the double charge of folly and of perjury; when you stated that the man who you had previously said was an entire stranger to you, had come to your house, and that you had given the documents which he asked for to aid him in his accusation to a man whom you had from the beginning considered a trickster and a prevaricator.

This text is based on the following book(s):
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
OCLC: 4709897