[119]
I see then, O judges, that the censors passed
animadversion on some of the judges who sat on that trial which Junius presided over, and added to their sentence that that very trial was the
cause of it. Now, first I will lay down this general principle, that this city has never been
so content with censorial animadversions as with judicial decisions. Nor in so notorious a
case need I waste time by citing instances. I will just adduce this one fact,—that
Caius Geta, after he had been expelled the senate by Lucius Metellus and Cnaeus Domitius when
they were censors, was himself appointed censor afterwards; and that he whose morals had met
with this reproof from the censors, was afterwards appointed to judge of the morals of the
whole Roman people, and of those very men who had thus punished him. But if that had been
thought a final judicial decision, (as other men when they have been condemned by a sentence
involving infamy are deprived for ever of all honour and all dignity, so) a man branded with
this ignominy would never have had any subsequent access to honour, or any possibility of
return to the senate.
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