[99]
When the people sell a man who has not become a
soldier, it does not take his liberty from him, but decides that he is not a free man who is
afraid to encounter danger in order to be free; but when it sells a man whose name is not on
the register, it judges in this way,—that as a man who is in just slavery is not on
the register, a man who, though a free man, is unwilling to be on the register, has, of his
own accord, repudiated his freedom. But if it is chiefly in those ways that freedom, or the
rights of citizenship, can be taken from a man, do not they who mention these things
understand that if our ancestors chose that those rights should be taken away for these
reasons, they chose also that they should not be taken away in any other manner?
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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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