have your plunder. If for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel
against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had
even known him?"[65] Of all this, which is the advocate's appeal to
pity, we may believe as little as we please. Cicero is addressing the
judge, and desires only an acquittal. But the argument shows that no
overt act in quest of restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless,
Chrysogonus feared such action, and had arranged with the two Tituses
that something should be done to prevent it. What are we to think of
the condition of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for
his wealth walking home from supper--that, indeed, might happen in
London if there existed the means of getting at the man's money when
the man was dead--but in which such a plot could be concerted in order
that the robbery might be consummated?

"We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false
plea that his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are
interfering--these Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son
who is the natural heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The
courts of law, which have only just been reopened since the dear days
of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert
enough to acquit a man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let
us get him convicted, and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and
thrown into the river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned,
for such was the punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb
us." It must have thus been that the plot was arranged.

It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less
was it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance
of many. Erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on
the part of Chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father