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[28]
What more need I say? Did not
Caius Cassius, a man endowed with equal greatness of mind and with equal wisdom,
depart from Italy with the deliberate
object of preventing Dolabella from obtaining possession of Syria? By what law? By what right? By that
which Jupiter himself has sanctioned, that every thing which was advantageous to
the republic should be considered legal and just.
For law is nothing but a correct principle drawn from the inspiration of the
gods, commanding what is honest, and forbidding the contrary. Cassius,
therefore, obeyed this law when he went into Syria; a province which belonged to another, if men were to
abide by the written laws; but which, when these were trampled under foot, was
his by the law of nature.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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