[74]
Sometimes too it is
effective to add something more biting in place of
the charge which is denied, as was done by Junius
Bassus when Domitia the wife of Passienus1 complained that by way of accusing her of meanness he
had alleged that she even sold old shoes. “No,”
he replied, “I never said anything of the sort. I
said you bought them.” A witty travesty of defence
was once produced by a Roman knight who was
charged by Augustus with having squandered his
patrimony. “I thought it was my own,” he answered.
1 See VI. i. 50.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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