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[93] What, then, is the reason why our defence is listened to with such silence now, but that all opportunity of defending himself was refused to Junius then? Because at that time there was nothing in the cause but envy, mistake, suspicion, daily assemblies, seditiously stirred up by appeals to popular feeling. The same tribune of the people was the accuser before the assemblies, and the prosecutor in the courts of law. Be came into the court of justice not from the, assembly, but bringing the whole assembly with him. Those steps of Aurelius, 1 which were new at that time, appeared as if they had been built on purpose for a theatre for the display of that tribunal. And when the prosecutor had filled them with men in a state of great excitement, there was not only no opportunity of speaking in favour of the defendant, but none of even rising up to speak.


1 These were steps built in the forum by Marcus Aurelius Cotta, and called by his name.

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