[14]
The prosecutor indulges me with a gesture. He intimates that Cnaeus Pompeius
acted ignorantly. As if it were a lighter charge, when one has
been occupied in affairs of state in so important a republic, and been
presiding over the most serious transactions, to do anything which you know
not to be legal, or to be utterly ignorant what is legal. Do you really mean
that he did not know, he who had waged a most formidable and important war
in Spain, what were the rights of
the city of Gades? or that he did
not catch the correct interpretation of a treaty made with the people, as
not understanding their language? Will any one then dare to say that Cnaeus
Pompeius is ignorant of that which the most ordinary men, men of no
knowledge of the world, of no military experience, which every common
amanuensis professes to be acquainted with?
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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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