第4章

'But what avails it? No liberty is left to hope for.Would there were any! I would answer in the words of Canius, who was accused Page 14by Gaius C?sar, 1 Germanicus's son, of being cognisant of a plot against himself: " If I had known of it, you would not have."'And in this matter grief has not so blunted my powers that I should complain of wicked men making impious attacks upon virtue:

but at this I do wonder, that they should hope to succeed.Evil desires are, it may be, due to our natural failings, but that the conceptions of any wicked mind should prevail against innocence while God watches over us, seems to me unnatural.Wherefore not without cause has one of your own followers asked, " If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good? "'Again, let impious men, who thirst for the blood of the whole Senate and of all good citizens, be allowed to wish for the ruin of us too whom they recognise as champions of the Senate and all good citizens:

but surely such as I have not deserved the same hatred from the members of the Senate too?

'Since you were always present to guide me in my words and my deeds, I think you remember what happened at Verona.When King Theodoric, desiring the common ruin of the Senate, was for extending to the whole order the charge of treason laid against Albinus, you remember how I laboured to defend the innocence of the order without any care for my own danger?

You know that I declare this truthfully and with no boasting praise of self.

14:1 -- The Emperor Caligula.Page 15

For the secret value of a conscience, that approves its own action, is lessened somewhat each time that it receives the reward of fame by displaying its deeds.But you see what end has fallen upon my innocency.In the place of the rewards of honest virtue, I am suffering the punishments of an ill deed that was not mine.And did ever any direct confession of a crime find its judges so well agreed upon exercising harshness, that neither the liability of the human heart to err, nor the changeableness of the fortune of all mankind, could yield one dissentient voice? If it had been said that Ihad wished to burn down temples, to murder with sacrilegious sword their priests, that I had planned the massacre of all good citizens, even so I should have been present to plead guilty or to be convicted, before the sentence was executed.But here am I, nearly five hundred-miles away, without the opportunity of defending myself, condemned to death and the confiscation of my property because of my tao great zeal for the Senate.Ah! well have they deserved that none should ever be liable to be convicted on such a charge! Even those who laid information have seen the honour of this accusation, for, that they might blacken it with some criminal ingredient, they had need to lie, saying that I had violated my conscience by using unholy means to obtain offices corruptly.But you, by being planted within me, dispelled from the chamber of my soul all craving for that which perishes, and Page 16where your eyes were looking there could be no place for any such sacrilege.

For you instilled into my ears, and thus into my daily thoughts, that saying of Pythagoras, " Follow after God." Nor was it seemly that I, whom you had built up to such excellence that you made me as a god, should seek the support of the basest wills of men.Yet, further, the innocent life within my home, my gathering of most honourable friends, my father-in-law Symmachus,l a man esteemed no less in his public life than for his private conscientiousness, these all put far from me all suspicion of this crime.