[46]
Wherefore you must decide either that the Aelian law still exists, that the
Fufian law has not been abrogated, and that it is not lawful for a law to be
passed on every one of the dies fasti; that,
when a law is being passed, there is no objection to observations of the
heavens being taken, or to such an announcement being made by the
magistrates, or to any one interposing his veto; that the decisions and
animadversions of the censors, and that most strict inspection of morals,
has not been abolished in the city by nefarious laws; that if a patrician
has been tribune of the people, he has been so in violation of the most
sacred laws,—if a plebeian, in disregard of the auspices: or else men must grant to me that it is not
necessary for me in the case of good measures to be bound by those rules
which they themselves do not adhere to in shameful ones; especially as it
has been a proposal made by them to Caius Caesar several times, that he
should carry the same measures in some other manner, (in some manner, that
is, which the auspices required and which the
law sanctioned;) and when, in the case of Clodius, the history of the
auspices is just the same, and all the laws
of the state have been overturned and destroyed.
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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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