[68]
That most prudent man, Lucius Cotta, a man most deeply attached to the
republic and to me, and above all to truth, saw this when he delivered his
opinion on the first of January. He then considered it unnecessary that any
law should be passed for my return. He said that I had consulted the
interests of the republic; that I had yielded to the tempest; that I had
been more friendly to you and to the rest of the citizens than to myself and
to my own relations; that I had been driven away by the disturbances of a
body of men banded together for purposes of bloodshed, and by an
unprecedented exercise of power; that no law could possibly have been passed
affecting my status as a citizen; that no law had been drawn up in writing,
that none could have any validity; that everything had been done in
disregard of the laws and of the usages of our ancestors, in a rash and
turbulent manner, by violence and frenzy. But if that were a law, then it
was not lawful for the consuls to refer the matter to the senate,1 nor for him himself to express his opinion
upon it in the senate. And as both these things were being done, it was not
right that it should be decreed that a law should be passed concerning me,
lest that which was no law at all, should be in consequence decided to be a
law. No opinion could be truer, sounder, more expedient, or better for the
republic. For the wickedness and frenzy of the man being stigmatized by it,
all danger of similar disgrace to the republic for the future was removed.
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