[57]
If a day had been appointed for my trial, must I have
dreaded the investigation? or must I have feared a private bill being
introduced against me without any trial? A trial in so shameful a cause I
suppose I am a man who, if the cause were not understood, could not speak so
as to explain it at all, or could I not make people approve of my cause,
when its excellence is such that of its own merits it made people approve
not only of itself while it was before them, but of me also though I was
absent? Was the senate, were all ranks of the people, were those men who
flew hither from all Italy to
cooperate in my recall, likely to be more indifferent, while I was present,
about retaining and preserving me, in that cause which even that parricide
says was such, that he complains that I was sought out and recalled to my
previous honours by the whole people?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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