to be murdered because of hatred. The father was going to disinherit
the son, and therefore the son murdered the father. In this there
might have been some probability, had there been any evidence of such
an intention on the father's part. But there was none. Cicero declares
that the father had never thought of disinheriting his son. There
had been no quarrel, no hatred. This had been assumed as a reason
--falsely. There was in fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it
possible that the son should have done it. The father was killed in
Rome when, as was evident, the son was fifty miles off. He never left
his farm. Erucius, the accuser, had said, and had said truly, that
Rome was full of murderers.[66] But who was the most likely to have
employed such a person: this rough husbandman, who had no intercourse
with Rome, who knew no one there, who knew little of Roman ways, who
had nothing to get by the murder when committed, or they who had long
been concerned with murderers, who knew Rome, and who were now found
to have the property in their hands?

The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed,
surely they might tell something? Here there comes out incidentally
the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were
tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might be
extracted. This is spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as far
as I can remember, by other Roman writers. It was regarded as an
established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court of
law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances. This was so
common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the
"question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of
extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of slaves having their liberty given
them in order that, being free, they may not be forced by torture to
tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty been of the nature described