6
No one. Why was that? Because in other causes good men think that they ought not to refuse to defend even guilty men, if they are their own intimate personal friends; but in this prosecution, there would not only be the fault of acting lightly, but there would be even some infection of wickedness which would taint one who defended that man whom he suspected of being involved in the guilt of planning the parricide of his country.
7
What was the case of Autronius? did not his companions, did not his own colleagues, did not his former friends, of whom he had at one time an ample number, did not all these men, who are the chief men in the republic, abandon him? Yes, and many of them even damaged him with their evidence. They made up their minds that it was an offence of such enormity, that they not only were bound to abstain from doing anything to conceal it, but that it was their duty to reveal it, and throw all the light that they were able upon it. What reason is there then for your wondering, if you see me countenancing this cause in company with those men, whom you know that I also joined in discountenancing the other causes by absenting myself from them. Unless you wish me to be considered a man of eminent ferocity before all other men, a man savage, inhuman, and endowed with an extraordinary cruelty and barbarity of disposition.
