[50]
A man may have been
driven away, he may have been put to flight, he may have been cast out; but it is absolutely
impossible for any one to have been pushed down, not only who has never been touched, but who,
if he has been touched, has been touched on even and level ground. What then? Are we to think
that this interdict was framed for the sake of those men alone, who could say that they had
been precipitated from high ground? for those are the only people who can properly be said to
have been driven down. 1
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1 The whole of this is quite untranslatable so as to give in English the sense which the Latin bears. The truth is, that it is a sort of play on the word dejicio, which is the Latin word used, and which not only means to drive away, its technical and proper meaning here, but also to throw down, which is the meaning which Cicero harps upon.
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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