M. Tullius Cicero, For Aulus Caecina
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[46] But I say this. If, when first Aebutius told Caecina, when in the castle, that he had collected men and armed them, and that, if he came thither, he would never go away again, Caecina had at once departed, you ought not to have doubted whether violence had been offered to Caecina. But if, as soon as he had beheld the armed men, he had then departed, you would have doubted still less. For everything is violence, which, by means of danger, either compels us to depart from any place, or prevents our approaching any place. But if you determine otherwise, take care lest what you determine amounts to this, that no violence has been offered to a man who goes away alive,—take care lest you prescribe this to all men, in all disputes about possession, to think that they have a right to do battle, and to engage in actual combat, lest, just as in battle punishments are appointed for cowards by the generals, so, in courts of justice, the cause of those men who have fled may have a worse appearance than that of those men who have striven on to the last.