[92]
But now, O judges, I am hindered by my own grief of mind from saying any more about the
misery of my client. That consideration belongs to you, O judges, I rest the whole cause on
your mercy and your humanity. You, after a rejection of several judges, of which we had no
suspicion, have sat as judges suddenly appointed to hear our cause, having been chosen by our
accusers from their hopes of your severity, but having been also given to us by fortune as the
protectors of our innocence. As I have been anxious as to what the Roman people thought of me,
because I had been severe towards wicked men, and so have undertaken the first defence of an
innocent man that was offered to me, so do you also mitigate that severity of the courts of
justice which has been exerted now for some months against the most audacious of men, by your
lenity and mercy.
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.