[36]
But let us at last come to the merits of the case; in which, under cover of
the Licinian law, which relates to treating,1 you have embraced all the laws
relating to bribery. Nor have you had any other object in view in dwelling
on this law, except the power which it gave you of selecting your judges.
And if this sort of tribunal is an equitable one in any other case except
that of bribing the tribes, I do not understand why, in this one description
of prosecution alone, the senate has allowed the tribes from which the
judges are taken to be selected by the prosecutor, and has not given the
same power of selection in other cases also. In actual prosecutions for
bribery, it has directed the tribunal to be formed by each party striking
off judges alternately; and though it omitted no other species of severity
to the defendant, still it thought it ought to omit this.
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1 The Latin word is sodalitium. “Especially a feasting club; at these parties conspiracies were frequently hatched, and so they obtained a bad name. Cic. Planc. 15.”—Riddle, Lat. Dict. in voc. “Lex Licinia was specially directed against the offence of sodalitium or the wholesale bribery of a tribe by gifts and treating.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 36, v. Ambitus.
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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