M. Tullius Cicero, Speech before Roman Citizens on Behalf of Gaius Rabirius, Defendant Against the Charge of Treason
William Blake Tyrrell, Ed.

[15] Seeing that in all these qualities Gaius Gracchus surpassed all men, how wide a gap do you reckon stretches out between you and him? But [Gaius] Gracchus would die a thousand times by the bitterest death before an executioner would stand in a public meeting of his. Regulations of the censors have enjoined that the executioner be deprived not merely of the forum but the skies, the air, and the dwellings of our city. This man dares to claim, does he, that he is a benefactor of the people and that I am foreign to your interests, when it was he who researched every instance of bitter punishments and bitter words, not from your memory or that of your fathers, but from annalistic archives and royal commentaries, while I, with all my energies, with my every strategy, and with everything I have said or done, have fought back and repelled savagery? Unless perchance you wish a condition for yourselves that your slaves, if they did not have the hope of liberty lying before them, could not possibly endure?