1The more eagerly and attentively you have read the books which I composed on the avenging of Helvidius, the more earnestly you demand that I write out for you in full everything outside the books and around the books, in short the whole course of the affair, at which you were not present because of your age. 2When Domitian had been killed, I resolved and decided within myself that here was a great and splendid opportunity for attacking the guilty, avenging the wretched, and bringing oneself forward. 2Moreover, among the many crimes of many men none seemed more atrocious than that in the senate a senator had laid hands on a senator, a man of praetorian rank on a consular, a judge on a defendant.
3I had, besides, had a friendship with Helvidius, as close as could have been with a man who, out of fear of the times, was hiding a great name and equal virtues in retirement; 3I had had one with Arria and Fannia, of whom the one was Helvidius' stepmother, the other the stepmother's mother. 3But it was not private ties so much that spurred me on as public right, the outrageousness of the deed, and the consideration of the precedent. 4Now in the first days after liberty was restored, each man had for himself demanded, with confused and disorderly shouting, the punishment of his own enemies — the lesser ones, at least — and at the same time crushed them.
4I, thinking it both more moderate and more resolute to press the most monstrous defendant not through the general hatred felt for the times but on his own particular crime, once that first onslaught had sufficiently died down and anger, growing fainter day by day, had returned to justice, although I was then especially sad, having recently lost my wife, send to Anteia — she had been married to Helvidius —; 4I ask her to come, since my still recent mourning kept me within my threshold. 5As soon as she came, 'I have resolved,' I say, 'not to let your husband go unavenged. 5Tell Arria and Fannia' — they had returned from exile — 'consult yourself, consult them, whether you wish to be associated with a deed in which I need no companion; 5but I would not so favour my own glory as to begrudge you a share in it.' 5Anteia delivers the message, and they do not delay.
6Opportunely, the senate was to meet within three days. 6I always referred everything to Corellius, whom I knew to be the most far-sighted and wisest man of our age: in this, however, I was content with my own counsel, fearing that he might forbid it; 6for he was rather hesitant and cautious. 6But I could not bring myself not to tell him that same day that I would do what I was no longer deliberating whether to do, having learned by experience that about what you have resolved you should not consult those whom, once consulted, you ought to obey. 7I come into the senate, ask leave to speak, and speak for a little while to the greatest approval.
7When I began to touch on the crime, to mark out the defendant, though still without naming him, there were shouts against me from every side. 7One said: 'Let us know who it is about whom you are making a motion out of turn'; another: 'Who is a defendant before a motion has been made?'; another: 'Let us who survive be safe.' 8I listen unperturbed and unafraid: so great is the power of the honour of what one has undertaken, and so much difference does it make to one's confidence or fear whether men are unwilling for you to do something or disapprove of it. 8It would take long to review everything that was thrown out then from this side and that.
9At last the consul said: 'Secundus, you will say what you wish when it is your turn to give your opinion.' 9'You had allowed me,' I say, 'what you have allowed everyone up to now.' 10I sit down; 10other business is conducted. 10Meanwhile one of my consular friends, in a private and careful conversation, rebukes me for having gone forward too boldly and incautiously, calls me back, advises me to desist, and even adds: 'You have made yourself a marked man for future emperors.' 10'So be it,' I say, 'provided it is for bad ones.' 11Scarcely had he gone when another came at me: 'What are you daring to do?
11Where are you rushing? 11To what dangers are you exposing yourself? 11Why do you trust the present when you are uncertain of the future? 11You are provoking a man who is already prefect of the treasury and soon to be consul, and propped up, moreover, by what influence and what friendships!' 11He names a certain man who was then holding a very large army in the East, not without great and uncertain rumours. 12To this I said: '"I have foreseen everything and gone through it all beforehand in my mind," and I do not refuse, if chance so brings it about, to pay the penalty for a most honourable deed, provided I avenge a most disgraceful one.' 13Now it was time for giving opinions.
13Domitius Apollinaris, consul elect, speaks; Fabricius Veiento speaks, Fabius Postuminus, Bittius Proculus, colleague of Publicius Certus, who was under discussion, and stepfather of the wife I had lost; after these, Ammius Flaccus. 13All defend Certus, not yet named by me, as though he had been named, and by their defence take up the charge as if it had been left open for anyone. 14What else they said it is not necessary to relate: you have it in the books; 14for I have set it all down in their own words. 15Avidius Quietus and Cornutus Tertullus speak on the other side: Quietus, that it was most unjust for the complaints of the grieving to be shut out, and that therefore Arria and Fannia should not be deprived of the right to complain, and that it mattered not of what rank a man was, but what case he had; 16Cornutus, that he had been appointed by the consuls guardian of Helvidius' daughter at the request of her mother and stepfather; 16that even now he could not bear to abandon the duties of his office, in which, however, he was both setting a limit to his own grief and conveying the most moderate feelings of those excellent women; 16that they were content to remind the senate of Publicius Certus' bloody flattery and to ask that, if the punishment for a most manifest crime were remitted, he should at least be branded with a mark, as if by the censor.
17Then Satrius Rufus, in a noncommittal and ambiguous speech, said: 'I think a wrong is done to Publicius Certus if he is not acquitted; 17he has been named by the friends of Arria and Fannia, and named by his own friends. 17Nor ought we to be anxious; 17for we who think well of the man are the same people who will also judge him. 17If he is innocent, as I both hope and wish and, until something is proved, believe, you will be able to acquit him.' 18So they spoke, each in the order in which he was called. 18My turn comes. 18I rise, use the opening which is in the book, and answer each of them.
18It is amazing with what attention and with what acclamation they received everything, those who a moment before had been shouting me down: so great a change followed either the importance of the matter or the success of the speech or the steadfastness of the speaker. 19I finish. 19Veiento begins to reply; 19no one allows it; 19he is interrupted and shouted down, so much so that he said: 'I beg you, conscript fathers, not to force me to call for the help of the tribunes.' 19And at once the tribune Murena said: 'I give you leave to speak, most distinguished Veiento.' 19Even then there are shouts against him. 20Amid the delays the consul, having called the names and completed the division, dismisses the senate, and left Veiento still almost standing and trying to speak.
20He complained a great deal about this insult, as he called it, in a line of Homer: 'Old man, truly the young warriors are wearing you down.' 21There was scarcely anyone in the senate who did not embrace me, kiss me, and vie in heaping praise on me, because I had brought back the custom, long interrupted, of acting for the public good at the cost of taking on private enmities; 21because, in short, I had freed the senate from the odium with which it burned among the other orders, since, while strict towards others, it spared senators alone through a kind of mutual pretence. 22These things were done in Certus' absence; 22for he had either suspected something of the kind or was, as his excuse ran, unwell.
22And Caesar, indeed, did not refer the motion about him back to the senate; 22yet I obtained what I had aimed at: for Certus' colleague received the consulship, Certus received a successor, and plainly what I had said at the end came to pass: 'Let him give back under the best of emperors the reward he received from the worst.' 23Afterwards I gathered up my speech as best I could, and added much. 24It happened by chance, but not as if by chance, that after the books were published Certus fell ill and died within a very few days. 25I have heard people report that this image hovered before his mind, this before his eyes, as if he saw me threatening him with a sword.
25Whether this is true I would not dare to affirm; 25yet it matters for the example that it should seem true. 26You have a letter, if you consider the proper measure of a letter, no shorter than the books you have read; 26but you will blame yourself, since you were not content with the books. 26Farewell.