Before your eyes human bodies ... battered with a scourge of lead or broken with cudgels or torn apart with claws or branded in the flames ... and you, the upholder of riches and of the sale of offices, recline without a care, resting on thick carpets piled high beneath you ... and entertain your guests with the tale of the man whom you have savagely tortured ... and lest anyone present ... be struck with horror at the story, you go on to claim, in doing this, that you are beholden to the laws.40