[28]
You will say that there was great intimacy
between you and Quintus Maximus. An admirable defence of your guilt! No
doubt it is the greatest praise of Maximus, that after he had adopted the
quarrel against Caius Antonius, and undertaken the prosecution, and after a
president of the court and a bench of judges had been selected, he was
unwilling to allow his adversary a power of striking off judges which would
have been too favourable for him.
* * * Quintus Maximus did nothing inconsistent either with his own virtue, or with the precedents of those most illustrious men, the Paulli, the Maximi, and Africani; whose renown we not only hope will be renewed by this man's virtue, but we actually see that it is so. It is your dishonesty, your guilt, your wickedness, that when you had proposed a law under a pretence of mercy, you put it off till a time when it might serve a purpose of cruelty. And now, indeed, Caius Antonius consoles himself under his misery with this one fact that he had rather be at a distance to hear that the images of his father and his brother, and that his brother's daughter, are placed, not in the house of their family, but in prison, than be at hand to see it.
* * * Quintus Maximus did nothing inconsistent either with his own virtue, or with the precedents of those most illustrious men, the Paulli, the Maximi, and Africani; whose renown we not only hope will be renewed by this man's virtue, but we actually see that it is so. It is your dishonesty, your guilt, your wickedness, that when you had proposed a law under a pretence of mercy, you put it off till a time when it might serve a purpose of cruelty. And now, indeed, Caius Antonius consoles himself under his misery with this one fact that he had rather be at a distance to hear that the images of his father and his brother, and that his brother's daughter, are placed, not in the house of their family, but in prison, than be at hand to see it.
