[13]
But this investigation though it is not
an unjust one, yet is not one which the senate thought ought to be ordered,
for there were regular laws and forms of trial for murder or for assault;
nor did the death of Publius Clodius cause the senate such concern and
sorrow that any new process of investigation need have been appointed for
when the senate had had the power of decreeing a trial in the matter of that
impious pollution of which he was guilty taken from it, who can believe it
thought it necessary to appoint a new form of trial about his death? Why
then did the senate decide that this burning of the senate house, this siege
laid to the house of Marcus Lepidus, and this very homicide had taken place
contrary to the interest of the republic? Why, because no
violence from one citizen to another can ever take place in a free state
which is not contrary to the interests of the republic.
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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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