[65]
Could they spring forward at a better time than when
Licinius had arrived? when he was holding in his hand the box of poison? and
if after that box had been delivered to the slaves the friends of the woman
had on a sudden emerged from the baths and seized Licinius, he would have
implored the protection of their good faith and have denied that that box
had been delivered to them by him. And how would they have reproved him?
Would they have said that they had seen it? First of all that would have
been to bring the imputation of a most atrocious crime on themselves
besides, they would be saying that they had seen what from the spot in which
they had been placed they could not possibly have seen. Therefore they
showed themselves at the very nick of time when Licinius had arrived and was
getting out the box, and was stretching out his hand, and delivering the
poison. This is rather the end of a farce than a regular comedy; in which,
when a regular end cannot be invented for it some one escapes out of some
one else's hands, the whistle1 sounds, and the curtain drops.
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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.
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