[70]
And now I ask of you whether you think that, if Calidius had been on his
trial, Metellus Pius, if he had been able to be at Rome, or his father, if he had been
alive, would have done for him what I am doing on the trial of Cnaeus
Plancius? I wish, indeed, that the misfortune of Opimius could be eradicated
from men's memories. But it is to be considered as a wound inflicted on the
republic, as a disgrace to this empire, as the infamy of the Roman people,
and not as a judicial verdict. For what more terrible blow could those
judges—if indeed they deserve to be called judges, and not
parricides of their country—inflict on the republic, than they did
when they drove that man out of the state, who as praetor had delivered the
republic from a war waged against it by its neighbours, and as consul, from
one carried on against it by its own citizens?
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