[54]
But I give you leave to pass over those things, which, as you are
silent, you admit have no existence. At all events you ought to make it evident that he
did intend to disinherit him. What then do you allege to make us think that that was the
case? You can say nothing with truth. Invent something at least with probability in it;
that you may not manifestly be convicted of doing what you are openly
doing—insulting the fortunes of this unhappy man, and the dignity of these
noble judges. He meant to disinherit his son. On what account? I don't know. Did he
disinherit him? No. Who hindered him? He was thinking of it. He was thinking of it? Who
did he tell? No one. What is abusing the court of justice, and the laws, and your
majesty, O judges, for the purposes of gain and lust, but accusing men in this manner,
and bringing imputations against them which you not only are not able to prove, but
which you do not even attempt to?
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.