The letters of Pliny the younger Author:Pliny Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EPISTLE V. Pliny to Ursus. i , I Informed you already, that Varenus had obtained leave to fummon witneffes on his behalf: This determination appeared e... more »quitable to many, and to fome unjuft. Both fides were obftinate in their way of thinking. Licinius Nepos in particular, who, at the next meeting of the fenate, when they were debating upon other affairs, made a rpeech concerning their laft refolution, and revived a caufe, that had been before concluded. He 'alfo added, that the confids ftiould be requefted, to propofe, whether, under the example of the law, to hinder votes from being illegally procured by candidates for public offices, it fhould pleafe the fenate for the future, that this addition mould be made to the law againft bribery, that, as the accufers, by that law, had a right to examine, and fummon their witnefles, the accufed alfo fhould be impowered to do the fame. This fpeech difpleafed many , they thought it unfea- ionable, improper, and prepofterous; and that he was in the wrong, after having omitted fpeaking in due time, to find fault now with a decree, to which, whilft it was in debate, he might have made his ob- jedlions. Jubentius Celsus, the praetor, reprimanded him feverely, and with many words, calling him a reformer of the fenate. Nepos anfwered him, and Celsus replied : Neither of them refrained from reproaches. I am unwilling to tell you, what I could not hear without concern. For which reafon, I was the more inclined to condemn the behaviour of fome of our fraternity % who, from a defire of hearing, The Latin is e numero noftro, which may refer either to ths fenators, or the lawyers; probably to the latter, ran backward and forward, now to Celsus, then to Nepos,, according as either of them was (peaking and at one time feemed to encourage a...« less