[49]
“Oh,” says he, “I did not read it because of its bearing on
that subject, but that you might understand this, that it did not appear to our ancestors to
be anything so utterly intolerable for a man to be slain.” But, in the first place
those very laws which you read, (to say nothing of other points,) prove how utterly our
ancestors disapproved of any man being slain unless it was absolutely unavoidable. First of
all, there is that holy law which armed men petitioned for, that unarmed men might be free
from danger. Wherefore it was only reasonable for them to wish the person of that magistrate
to be hedged round with the protection of the laws, by whom the laws themselves are protected.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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