A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE.
There were various courts at Rome for persons accused of various
crimes. One judge, for instance, used to try charges of poisoning;
another, charges of murder; and, just as is the case among us, each
judge had a jury, who gave their verdict on the evidence which they had
heard. But this verdict was not, as with us, the verdict of the whole
jury, given only if all can be induced to agree, but of the majority.
Each juryman wrote his opinion on a little tablet of wood, putting A.
(_absolvo_, "I acquit") if he thought the accused innocent, K.
(_condemno_, "I condemn") if he thought him guilty, and N.L. (_non
liquet_, "It is not clear") if the case seemed suspicious, though there
was not enough evidence to convict.
In the year 66 B.C. a very strange trial took place in the Court of
Poison Cases. A certain Cluentius was accused of having poisoned his
step-father, Oppianicus, and various other persons. Cicero, who was
praetor that year (the praetor was the magistrate next in rank to the
consul), defended Cluentius, and told his client's whole story.
Cluentius and his step-father were both natives of Larinum, a town in
Apulia, where there was a famous temple of Mars. A dispute about the
property of this temple caused an open quarrel between the two men, who
had indeed been enemies for some years. Oppianicus took up the case of
some slaves, who were called _Servants of Mars_, declaring that they
were not slaves at all, but Roman citizens. This he did, it would seem,
because he desired to annoy his fellow-townsmen, with whom he was very
unpopular. The people of Larinum, who were very much interested in all
that concerned the splendor of their temple services, resisted the
claim, and asked Cluentius to plead their case. Cluentius consented.
While the cause was going on, it occurred to Oppianicus to get rid of
his opponent by poison. He employed an agent, and the agent put the
matter into the hands of his freedman, a certain Scamander. Scamander
tried to accomplish his object by bribing the slave of the physician who
was attending Cluentius. The physician was a needy Greek, and his slave
had probably hard and scanty fare; but he was an honest man, and as
clever as he was honest. He pretended to accept the offer, and arranged
for a meeting. This done, he told the whole matter to his master the
physician, and the physician told it again to his patient. Cluentius
arranged that certain friends should be present in concealment at the
interview between the slave and his tempter. The villain came, and was
seized with the poison and a packet of money, sealed with his master's
seal, upon him.
Cluentius, who had put up with many provocations from his mother's
husband, now felt that his life was in danger, and determined to defend
himself. He indicted Scamander for an attempt to poison. The man was
found guilty. Scamander's patron (as they used to call a freedman's old
master) was next brought to trial, and with the same result. Last of all
Oppianicus, the chief criminal, was attacked. Scamander's trial had
warned him of his danger, and he had labored to bring about the man's
acquittal. One vote, and one only, he had contrived to secure. And to
the giver of this vote, a needy and unprincipled member of the Senate,
he now had recourse. He went, of course, with a large sum in his
hand--something about five thousand six hundred pounds of our money.
With this the senator--Staienus by name--was to bribe sixteen out of the
thirty-two jurymen. They were to have three hundred and fifty pounds
apiece for their votes, and Staienus was to have as much for his own
vote (which would give a majority), and something over for his trouble.
Staienus conceived the happy idea of appropriating the whole, and he
managed it in this way. He accosted a fellow-juror, whom he knew to be
as unprincipled as himself. "Bulbus," he said, "you will help me in
taking care that we sha'n't serve our country for nothing." "You may
count on me," said the man. Staienus went on, "The defendant has
promised three hundred and fifty pounds to every juror who will vote
'Not Guilty.' You know who will take the money. Secure them, and come
again to me." Nine days after, Bulbus came with beaming face to
Staienus. "I have got the sixteen in the matter you know of; and now,
where is the money?" "He has played me false," replied the other; "the
money is not forthcoming. As for myself, I shall certainly vote
'Guilty.'"
The trial came to an end, and the verdict was to be given. The defendant
claimed that it should be given by word of mouth, being anxious to know
who had earned their money. Staienus and Bulbus were the first to vote.
To the surprise of all, they voted "Guilty." Rumors too of foul play had
spread about. The two circumstances caused some of the more respectable
jurors to hesitate. In the end _five_ voted for acquittal, _ten_ said
"Not Proven," and seventeen "Guilty." Oppianicus suffered nothing worse
than banishment, a banishment which did not prevent him from living in
Italy, and even in the neighborhood of Rome. The Romans, though they
shed blood like water in their civil strife, were singularly lenient in
their punishments. Not long afterwards he died.
His widow saw in his death an opportunity of gratifying the unnatural
hatred which she had long felt for her son Cluentius. She would accuse
him of poisoning his step-father. Her first attempt failed completely.
She subjected three slaves to torture, one of them her own, another
belonged to the younger Oppianicus, a third the property of the
physician who had attended the deceased in his last illness. But the
cruelties and tortures extorted no confession from the men. At last the
friends whom she had summoned to be present at the inquiry compelled her
to desist. Three years afterwards she renewed the attempt. She had taken
one of the three tortured slaves into high favor, and had established
him as a physician at Larinum. The man committed an audacious robbery in
his mistress's house, breaking open a chest and abstracting from it a
quantity of silver coin and five pounds weight of gold. At the same time
he murdered two of his fellow-slaves, and threw their bodies into the
fish-pond. Suspicion fell upon the missing slaves. But when the chest
came to be closely examined, the opening was found to be of a very
curious kind. A friend remembered that he had lately seen among the
miscellaneous articles at an auction a circular saw which would have
made just such an opening. It was found that this saw had been bought by
the physician. He was now charged with the crime. Thereupon a young lad
who had been his accomplice came forward and told the story. The bodies
were found in the fish-pond. The guilty slave was tortured. He confessed
the deed, and he also confessed, his mistress declared, that he had
given poison to Oppianicus at the instance of Cluentius. No opportunity
was given for further inquiry. His confession made, the man was
immediately executed. Under strong compulsion from his step-mother, the
younger Oppianicus now took up the case, and indicted Cluentius for
murder. The evidence was very weak, little or nothing beyond the very
doubtful confession spoken of above; but then there was a very violent
prejudice against the accused. There had been a suspicion--perhaps more
than a suspicion--of foul play in the trial which had ended in the
condemnation of Oppianicus. The defendant, men said, might have
attempted to bribe the jury, but the plaintiff had certainly done so. It
would be a fine thing if he were to be punished even by finding him
guilty of a crime which he had not committed.
In defending his client, Cicero relied as much upon the terrible list
of crimes which had been proved against the dead Oppianicus as upon any
thing else. Terrible indeed it was, as a few specimens from the
catalogue will prove.
Among the wealthier inhabitants of Larinum was a certain Dinaea, a
childless widow. She had lost her eldest son in the Social War (the war
carried on between Rome and her Italian allies), and had seen two others
die of disease. Her only daughter, who had been married to Oppianicus,
was also dead. Now came the unexpected news that her eldest son was
still alive. He had been sold into slavery, and was still working among
a gang of laborers on a farm in Gaul. The poor woman called her kinsfolk
together and implored them to undertake the task of recovering him. At
the same time she made a will, leaving the bulk of her property to her
daughter's son, the younger Oppianicus, but providing for the missing
man a legacy of between three and four thousand pounds. The elder
Oppianicus was not disposed to see so large a sum go out of the family.
Dinaea fell ill, and he brought her his own physician. The patient
refused the man's services; they had been fatal, she said, to all her
kinsfolk. Oppianicus then contrived to introduce to her a traveling
quack from Ancona. He had bribed the man with about seventeen pounds of
our money to administer a deadly drug. The fee was large, and the fellow
was expected to take some pains with the business; but he was in a
hurry; he had many markets to visit; and he gave a single dose which
there was no need to repeat.
Meanwhile Dinaea's kinsfolk had sent two agents to make inquiries for
the missing son. But Oppianicus had been beforehand with them. He had
bribed the man who had brought the first news, had learned where he was
to be found, and had caused him to be assassinated. The agents wrote to
their employers at Larinum, saying that the object of their search could
not be found, Oppianicus having undoubtedly tampered with the person
from whom information was to be obtained. This letter excited great
indignation at Larinum; and one of the family publicly declared in the
market-place that he should hold Oppianicus (who happened to be present)
responsible if any harm should be found to have happened to the missing
man. A few days afterwards the agents themselves returned. They had
found the man, but he was dead. Oppianicus dared not face the burst of
rage which this news excited, and fled from Larinum. But he was not at
the end of his resources. The Civil War between Sulla and the party of
Marius (for Marius himself was now dead) was raging, and Oppianicus fled
to the camp of Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's lieutenants. There he
represented himself as one who had suffered for the party. Metellus had
himself fought in the Social War, and fought against the side to which
the murdered prisoner belonged. It was therefore easy to persuade him
that the man had deserved his fate, and that his friends were unworthy
persons and dangerous to the commonwealth. Oppianicus returned to
Larinum with an armed force, deposed the magistrates whom the
towns-people had chosen, produced Sulla's mandate for the appointment of
himself and three of his creatures in their stead, as well as for the
execution of four persons particularly obnoxious to him. These four
were, the man who had publicly threatened him, two of his kinsfolk, and
one of the instruments of his own villainies, whom he now found it
convenient to get out of the way.
The story of the crimes of Oppianicus, of which only a small part has
been given, having been finished, Cicero related the true circumstances
of his death. After his banishment he had wandered about for a while
shunned by all his acquaintances. Then he had taken up his quarters in a
farmhouse in the Falernian country. From these he was driven away by a
quarrel with the farmer, and removed to a small lodging which he had
hired outside the walls of Rome. Not long afterwards he fell from his
horse, and received a severe injury in his side. His health was already
weak, fever came on, he was carried into the city and died after a few
days' illness.
Besides the charge of poisoning Oppianicus there were others that had to
be briefly dealt with. One only of these needs to be mentioned.
Cluentius, it was said, had put poison into a cup of honey wine, with
the intention of giving it to the younger Oppianicus. The occasion, it
was allowed, was the young man's wedding-breakfast, to which, as was
the custom at Larinum, a large company had been invited. The prosecutor
affirmed that one of the bridegroom's friends had intercepted the cup on
its way, drunk off its contents, and instantly expired. The answer to
this was complete. The young man had not instantly expired. On the
contrary, he had died after an illness of several days, and this illness
had had a different cause. He was already out of health when he came to
the breakfast, and he had made himself worse by eating and drinking too
freely, "as," says the orator, "young men will do." He then called a
witness to whom no one could object, the father of the deceased. "The
least suspicion of the guilt of Cluentius would have brought him as a
witness against him. Instead of doing this he gives him his support.
Read," said Cicero to the clerk, "read his evidence. And you, sir,"
turning to the father, "stand up a while, if you please, and submit to
the pain of hearing what I am obliged to relate. I will say no more
about the case. Your conduct has been admirable; you would not allow
your own sorrow to involve an innocent man in the deplorable calamity of
a false accusation."
Then came the story of the cruel and shameful plot which the mother had
contrived against her son. Nothing would content this wicked woman but
that she must herself journey to Rome to give all the help that she
could to the prosecution. "And what a journey this was!" cried Cicero.
"I live near some of the towns near which she passed, and I have heard
from many witnesses what happened. Vast crowds came to see her. Men, ay,
and women too, groaned aloud as she passed by. Groaned at what? Why,
that from the distant town of Larinum, from the very shore of the Upper
Sea, a woman was coming with a great retinue and heavy money-bags,
coming with the single object of bringing about the ruin of a son who
was being tried for his life. In all those crowds there was not a man
who did not think that every spot on which she set her foot needed to be
purified, that the very earth, which is the mother of us all, was
defiled by the presence of a mother so abominably wicked. There was not
a single town in which she was allowed to stay; there was not an inn of
all the many upon that road where the host did not shun the contagion
of her presence. And indeed she preferred to trust herself to solitude
and to darkness rather than to any city or hostelry. And now," said
Cicero, turning to the woman, who was probably sitting in court, "does
she think that we do not all know her schemes, her intrigues, her
purposes from day to day? Truly we know exactly to whom she has gone, to
whom she has promised money, whose integrity she has endeavored to
corrupt with her bribes. Nay, more: we have heard all about the things
which she supposes to be a secret, her nightly sacrifice, her wicked
prayers, her abominable vows."
He then turned to the son, whom he would have the jury believe was as
admirable as the mother was vile. He had certainly brought together a
wonderful array of witnesses to, character. From Larinum every grown-up
man that had the strength to make the journey had come to Rome to
support their fellow-townsman. The town was left to the care of women
and children. With these witnesses had come, bringing a resolution of
the local senate full of the praises of the accused, a deputation of the
senators. Cicero turned to the deputation and begged them to stand up
while the resolution was being read. They stood up and burst into tears,
which indeed are much more common among the people of the south than
among us, and of which no one sees any reason to be ashamed. "You see
these tears, gentlemen," cried the orator to the jury. "You may be sure,
from seeing them, that every member of the senate was in tears also when
they passed this resolution." Nor was it only Larinum, but all the chief
Samnite towns that had sent their most respected citizens to give their
evidence for Cluentius. "Few," said Cicero, "I think, are loved by me as
much as he is loved by all these friends."
Cluentius was acquitted. Cicero is said to have boasted afterwards that
he had blinded the eyes of the jury. Probably his client had bribed the
jury in the trial of his step-father. That was certainly the common
belief, which indeed went so far as to fix the precise sum which he
paid. "How many miles is your farm from Rome?" was asked of one of the
witnesses at a trial connected with the case. "Less than fifty-three,"
he replied. "Exactly the sum," was the general cry from the spectators.
The point of the joke is in the fact that the same word stood in Latin
for the _thousand_ paces which made a mile and the _thousand_ coins by
which sums of money were commonly reckoned. Oppianicus had paid forty
thousand for an acquittal, and Cluentius outbid him with fifty thousand
("less than fifty-three") to secure a verdict of guilty. But whatever we
may think of the guilt or innocence of Cluentius, there can be no doubt
that the cause in which Cicero defended him was one of the most
interesting ever tried in Rome.