378 
pliny's katubal htstoet. 
[Book XXIX. 
emperor, and for inquisitions to be made at our party-walls*' 
even.: persons who are to sit in judgment on our monetary 
matters are sent for to Gades** and the very Pillars of Hercules ; 
while a question of exile is never entertained without a panel 
of forty- five men selected for the purpose.*^ Eut when it is 
the judge's own life that is at stake, who are the persons that 
are to hold council upon it, but those who the very next moment 
are about to take it ! 
And yet so it is, that we only meet with our deserts, no 
one of us feeling the least anxiety to know what is necessary 
for his own welfare. We walk*^ with the feet of other people, 
we see with the eyes of other people, trusting to the memory of 
others we salute one another, and it is by the aid of others that 
we live. The most precious objects of existence, and the chief 
supports of life, are entirely lost to us, and we have nothing 
left but our pleasures to call our own. I will not leave Cato 
exposed to the hatred of a profession so ambitious as this, nor 
yet that senate which judged as he did, but at the same time 
I will pursue my object without wresting to my purpose the 
crimes practised by its adepts, as some might naturally expect. 
Eor what profession has there been more fruitful in poisonings, 
or from which there have emanated more frauds upon wills ? 
And then, too, what adulteries have been committed, in the 
very houses of our princes even ! the intrigue of Eudemus,^^ 
for example, with Livia, the wife of Drusus Caesar, and that of 
Yalens with the royal lady previously mentioned.^^ Let us 
not impute these evils, I say, to the art, but to the men who 
practise it ; for Cato, I verily believe, as little apprehended 
*3 " Inqiiisitio per pariej-es.'* The reading is doubtful, but lie not im- 
probably alludes to the employment of spies. 
Hardouin thinks that he alludes to Cornelius Balbus here, a native of 
Gades. See B. v. c. 5, and B. vii. 44. 
4^ " Electis viris datur tabula." He alludes to the three tablets de- 
livered to the Judices, one of which had inscribed on it " Acquitted," an- 
other '^Not proven/' and a third Guilty " — Absolmtur, Non liquet^ and 
Condemno. 
" In this place he casteth in the Romans' teeth, their Lecticarii, Anag- 
nostcB, and NomenclatoresJ* — Holland. Letter-bearers, readers, and promp- 
ters as to the names of the persons addressed. 
He alludes to the resources of medicine. 
A physician at Rome, who was afterwards put to the torture for this 
crime. Livia was the daughter of Drusus Nero, the brother of Tiberius, 
Messalina, mentioned in c. 5 of this Book. 
