[132]
However, be it so. Gellius condemns Popillius. He decides that he had accepted money from
Cluentius. Lentulus says that he had not. For he did not elect Popillius into the senate,
because he was the son of a freedman; but he left him his place as a senator at the games, and
the other ornaments of that rank, and released him from all ignominy. And by doing so, he
declares his opinion, that he had voted against Oppianicus without having been bribed to do
so. And afterwards Lentulus, on a trial for bribery, gave his evidence most zealously in
favour of this same Popillius. Wherefore, if Lentulus did not agree with the decision of
Lucius Gellius, and if Gellius was not contented with the opinion delivered by Lentulus, and
if each censor thought himself not bound at all by the opinion of the other censor, what
reason is there why any one of us should think that the notes of the censors ought to be all
fixed and ratified so as to be unalterable for ever?
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.