Aulus Cluentius, a Roman knight of great riches, was accused before the praetor of having poisoned his father-in-law, Oppianicus, who a few years previously had been tried and banished for an attempt to poison Cluentius. For Oppianicus had murdered Melinus, the former husband of Sassia, the mother of Cluentius, and married her, and finding that if Cluentius were dead his property would all come to his mother, endeavoured to poison him, but was detected and convicted. After his conviction, Lucius Quinctius, a tribune of the people, who had defended him on his trial, endeavoured at all times to excite odium against Cluentius, saying that he had procured the conviction of Oppianicus by bribery, though in point of fact Oppianicus himself had employed large sums in endeavours to bribe his judges, and Stalenus and others had been convicted of being parties to the corruption. In the fifth year of his exile Oppianicus died, and a prosecution was instituted against Cluentius by Sassia, his own mother; saying that he had poisoned Oppianicus by the agency of a man of the name of Marcus Asellius. Cluentius was acquitted. This happened three years before this present trial. But now Sassia, having married her daughter to the young Oppianicus, urged him to institute fresh proceedings against Cluentius. So he prosecuted him afresh. His counsel was Lucius Attius, and the cause was tried before Quintus Vocontius Naso in the consulship of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Volcatius Tullus, A.U.C. 688. Manutius makes a mistake in fixing this consulship of Lepidus and Tullus, and by consequence, the delivery of this oration, one year earlier. Cluentius was acquitted.