40.12
When
Perseus had finished, all present looked at Demetrius, expecting him to reply
at once. There was a long silence and everybody saw that he was bathed in
tears and unable to speak. At length they told him that he must speak, and he
was compelled to stifle his grief. So he began: "Everything, my father, on
which those who are accused could rely for their defence has been
prejudiced by my accuser. The tears which he feigned for the purpose of
effecting another's ruin have made you suspect the reality of mine. Ever since
my return from Rome he has been hatching secret plots against me day and
night with his confederates, and now he deliberately fastens on me the
character not only of an intriguer but even of an open assassin. He alarms
you with the bugbear of his own danger in order that through you he may
hasten the destruction of his unoffending brother. He says that there is no
place of refuge for him in the whole world in order that I may have no hope
of safety with you. Beset by foes, deserted by friends, destitute of all
resources, he loads me with the odium aroused by the favour shown to me
by foreigners, which hurts me more than it benefits. How like a common
prosecutor has he acted in mixing up his account of last night's events with a
bitter attack upon the rest of my life so that he put that incident, which you
will see in its true colours, in a suspicious light, by representing the tenor of
my life as other than what it is, and bolstering up that false and scandalous
description of my hopes and wishes and designs by this fictitious and hollow
evidence. And at the same time he tried to make his accusations appear as
though they were uttered without preparation, on the spur of the moment,
called forth forsooth by the alarm and tumult of the night. But, Perseus, if I
were a traitor to my father and the realm, if I were scheming with the
Romans or with any of my father's enemies, you ought not to have waited
for this trumped-up story of last night's doings, you ought to have accused
me of treachery before this. If that accusation as distinct from this one was
without any foundation and a proof of your bad feeling towards me, rather
than of my guilt, surely it ought to be passed over today and deferred till
another occasion, so that the question which of us in a spirit of unheard-of
hatred has been intriguing against the other might be decided on its merits.
At all events, so far as I am able to do so in this sudden bewilderment, I shall
separate what you have confused together, and unveil last night's plot, to
show whether you or I were the author of it.
"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?'