Laudator Temporis Acti

Seneca, Agamemnon 280 (Aegisthus speaking; tr. John G. Fitch):

A person hated by a master is guilty by fiat, not by trial.

ubi dominus odit, fit nocens, non quaeritur.

R.J. Tarrant ad loc.:

The sense was correctly explained by Ascensius: 'fit nocens cui ille nocere uult, licet nihil commiserit, quia non quaeritur, i.e. non fit quaestio aut inquisitio legitima.' For fieri nocentem cp. Cic. Pis. 99 te ... metuentem uidebo ne reus fias, Sall. Jug. 35.7 fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex iure gentium Bomilcar, Sen. Med. 498f., Oed. 1019 nemo fit fato nocens. Our passage may be the source of HO 43ff. nec potest [sc. Alcides] fieri nocens. It has been suggested that fit nocens here is to be taken impersonally, 'one is declared guilty' (so Zwierlein, Gnomon xli (1969) 768); the constructions of this type cited by grammarians, however, are not similar enough to be convincing, cf. Wackernagel, Vorlesungen 1.111ff., P. Lejay, Rev. Phil. xl (1916) 155ff. Further, the other cases of fieri nocentem cited above all involve personal subjects. Only Düring has attempted to remove the syntactical oddity by emendation, and his sit nocens non quaeritur ( = non quaeritur an sit nocens) merely replaces it with another (see below on 404a, to which Düring appeals). One should perhaps think instead of reading fis (which might easily have been accommodated to the third person verbs nearby) or, alternatively, quem dominus odit fit nocens. The corruption is harder to explain in the second case, but ubi is a plausible Flickwort (cf. Oed. 517 etc.). (It is possible that nocens is subject, not complement, of fit: 'a criminal is made, not sought'; but this distinction does not stress the arbitrary use of power which Aegisthus is denouncing. Where fieri is so distinguished from nascor, as in Plin. N.H. 17.1 quae arte et humanis ingeniis fiunt uerius quam nascuntur, 35.30, Sen. Ira 2.10.6, Thy. 313f. ne mali fiant times? | nascuntur, Tert. Apol. 18.4, it denotes a conscious effort which is out of place here.)