[16]
The ignominy
of a public trial is a miserable thing,—the deprivation of a man's property by way
of penalty is a miserable thing,—exile is a miserable thing; but still, in all these
disasters some trace of liberty remains to one. Even if death be threatened, we may die free
men; but the executioner, and the veiling of the head, and the mere name of the gibbet, should
be far removed, not only from the persons of Roman citizens—from their thoughts, and
eyes, and ears. For not only the actual fact and endurance of all these things, but the bare
possibility of being exposed to them,—the expectation, the mere mention of them
even,—is unworthy of a Roman citizen and of a free man. Does not the kindness of
their masters at one touch deliver our slaves from the fear of all these punishments; and
shall neither our exploits, nor the purity of our past life, nor the honours which you have
conferred on us, save us from the scourge, from the hangman's hook, and even from the dread of
the gibbet?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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