[38]
If this be the proper form, which we have employed, then, if you are the
judge, we must gain our cause. For I have no fear of your saying in the same cause, and with
the same interdict, that you ought to be restored, but that Caecina ought not. In truth, who
is there to whom it is not clear, that the property, and possessions, and fortunes of all men
will be again brought back into a state of uncertainty if the effect of this interdict is made
in any particular more obscure, or less vigorous? if, under the authority of such men as these
judges, the violence of armed men should appear to be approved by a judicial decision? in a
trial in which it can be said that there was no question at issue about arms, but that inquiry
was only made into the language of the interdict. Shall that man gain his cause before your
tribunal, who defends himself in this manner, “I drove you away with armed men, I
did not drive you out,” so that the fact is not to depend on the equity of the
defence, but on the correctness of a single expression?
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.