[70]
“What can
he be meaning? does he want to be considered a prosecutor who hitherto has been
accustomed to defend people? and especially now at the age when he is seeking the
aedileship?” But I think it becomes not my age only, but even a much greater
age, and I think it an action consistent with the highest dignity to accuse the wicked,
and to defend the miserable and distressed. And in truth, either this is a remedy for a
republic diseased and in an almost desperate condition, and for tribunals corrupted and
contaminated by the vices and baseness of a few, for men of the greatest possible honour
and uprightness and modesty to undertake to uphold the stability of the laws, and the
authority of the courts of justice; or else, if this is of no advantage, no medicine
whatever will ever be found for such terrible and numerous evils as these.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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