[100]
Then that
man, influenced by the atrocity of the action, in order that all suspicion of that
crime might be removed from himself, employs some one connected with him by ties of
hospitality to find a man whom he might accuse of having done it, and bids him take
care that he be convicted of the accusation, so that he himself might not be subject
to the charge. The matter is not delayed. For when he had departed from Catina, an information is laid against a certain
slave. He is accused; false witnesses are suborned against him; the whole senate
sits in judgment on the affair, according to the laws of the Catenans. The
priestesses are summoned; they are examined secretly in the senate-house, and asked
what had been done, and how they thought that the statue had been carried off. They
answer that the servants of the praetor had been seen in the temple. The matter,
which previously had not been very obscure, began to be clear enough by the evidence
of the priestesses. The judges deliberate; the innocent slave is acquitted by every
vote, in order that you may the more easily be able to condemn this man by all your
votes.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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