Book 40
12
"He wants to make it appear that I formed a design against his life in order, forsooth, that after the removal of the elder brother, to whom by a universally acknowledged right, by the usage of the Macedonians and by your decision, as he says, the future crown belongs, I, the younger son, could step into the place of him whom I had killed. What then is the meaning of that part of his speech in which he says that I curried favour with the Romans and hoped through my reliance on them to come to the throne? For if I believed that the Romans possessed so much influence that they could impose upon the Macedonians whom they would as king, and if I trusted so much to my interest with them, what need was there for me to kill my brother? Was it that I might wear a crown stained with a brother's blood? That I might be execrated and hated by the very men whose favour I have won by a straightforwardness, either sincere or at least assumed, if indeed I have won it? Perhaps you imagine that T. Quinctius, by whose virtuous counsels you say that I am ruled, has instigated me to be my brother's murderer, though he himself lives in such close affection with his own brother. Perseus has brought together in what he said not only my favourable position with the Romans but also the sentiments of the Macedonians and the all but unanimous judgment of gods and men, and owing to all these advantages he professes to believe that he is no match for me. And yet, as though in everything else I were inferior to him, he maintains that I have betaken myself to crime as my last hope. Do you want the issue of the trial to take this form: 'Whichever of the two feared that the other might be thought more worthy of the crown, let him be judged to have formed the design of crushing his brother?'
