1'Take everything away,' he says, 'and remove the labours you have begun!' 1Whether you are writing something or reading, have it taken away, removed, and receive my speech, as those arms were, divine — could I have said anything prouder? 1— but in truth fine as among my own speeches; 1for it is enough for me to compete with myself. 2It is on behalf of Attia Viriola, and remarkable for the standing of the person, the rarity of the precedent, and the importance of the trial. 2For a woman of distinguished birth, married to a man of praetorian rank, disinherited by her eighty-year-old father within eleven days of his bringing home a stepmother for her, carried away by love, was claiming her father's property before the fourfold court.
3There sat a hundred and eighty judges — for so many are gathered in the four panels —, a huge array of advocates on both sides and crowded benches, and besides a dense ring of bystanders surrounded the very wide court in many circles. 4Besides this the tribunal was packed, and even from the upper part of the basilica women and men leaned over in their eagerness to hear — which was difficult — and to see — which was easy. 4Great was the expectation of fathers, great that of daughters, great too that of stepmothers. 5The result was mixed; 5for in two panels we won, in as many we lost.
5Quite remarkable and wonderful was so great a difference in the same case, with the same judges, the same advocates, at the same time. 6It happened by chance, in a way that did not seem chance: the stepmother lost, herself heir to a sixth part; Suburanus lost, who, disinherited by his own father, was with singular impudence claiming the property of another man's father, not having dared to claim his own father's. 7I have set this out for you, first so that you might learn from the letter what you could not learn from the speech, and then — for I shall disclose my tricks — so that you might read the speech more gladly, if you seemed to yourself not to be reading but to be present at the trial; 7and though it is long, I do not despair that it will win the favour of a very short one.
8For it is refreshed by its wealth of matter, its neat arrangement, its several little narratives, and its variety of expression. 8There are many passages — I should not dare to say so except to you — that are elevated, many combative, many subtle. 9For among those vigorous and lofty passages there often intervenes the necessity of calculating and almost of calling for counters and a board, so that the Centumviral Court is suddenly turned into the shape of a private trial. 10We spread our sails to indignation, to anger, to grief, and in this most ample case we were carried along, as on a great sea, by many winds.
11In short, some of my intimate friends are accustomed to think that this speech — I shall say it again — is, among my speeches, what the speech For Ctesiphon is: whether rightly, you will most easily judge, who have all of them so thoroughly by heart that you can compare them with this while you read this alone. 11Farewell.