[46]
As these things then are so where is the accusation, where is the prosecutor?
where are the witnesses? What is more scandalous, than when a man has
neither been ordered to appear, nor summoned, nor accused, for hired men,
assassins, needy and profligate citizens, to give a vote touching his status
as a citizen, his children and all his fortune, and then to think that vote
a law? But, if he was able to do this in my case, I being a man protected by
the honours which I had attained, by the justice of my cause, and by the
republic; and being not so rich as to make my money an object to my enemies,
and he had nothing which could be injurious to me, except the great chances
which were taking place in the affairs of the state, and the critical
condition of the times; what is likely to happen to those men whose way of
life is removed from popular honours and from all that renown which gives
influence, and whose riches are so great that too many men, needy,
extravagant, and even of noble birth, covet them?
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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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