[88]
From
the Capitol. Whence were they driven who were with Gracchus? Out of the Capitol. You see,
therefore, that by this one phrase two things are signified, both out of what place, and from
what place; and when the praetor orders me to be replaced in that place, he orders me to be so
on this understanding, just as if the Gauls had demanded of our ancestors to be replaced in
the situation from which they had been driven, and if by any force they had been able to
obtain it, it would not, I imagine, have been right for them to be replaced in the mine, by
which they had attacked the Capitol, but in the Capitol itself. For this is
understood—“Replace him in the place from which you drove him
away,” whether you drove him out of the place, or from the place. This now is plain
enough; replace him in that place; if you drove him out of this place, replace him in it; if
you drove him from this place, replace him in that place, not out of which, but from which he
was driven. Just as if a person at sea, when he had come near to his own country, were on a
sudden driven off by a storm, and were to wish, as he had been driven off from his country, to
be restored to his former position. What he would wish, I imagine, would be
this,—that fortune would restore him to the place from which he had been driven; not
so as to replace him in the sea, but in the city which he was on his way to. So too, (since
now we are necessarily hunting out the meaning of words from the similarity of the
circumstances,) he who demands to be restored to the place from which he was
driven,—that is to say, whence he was driven, —demands to be restored to
that very place itself.
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