[34]
Do you not see that I am destroying
all your proceedings by the roots? that I am arguing, what is manifest, that
you did nothing whatever according to law,—that you were not a
tribune of the people at all? I say this, that you are a patrician. I say so
before the priests; the augurs are present. I take my stand on the common
public law. What, O priests is the law concerning adoption? Why that he may
adopt children who is no longer able to have children himself, and who
failed in having them when he was of an age to expect it. What reason, then,
any one has for adopting children, what considerations of family or dignity
are involved what principles of religion are concerned, are questions which
are accustomed to be put to the college of priests. What if all these
circumstances are found to exist in that adoption? The person who adopts him
is twenty years old; a minor adopts a senator. Does he do so for the sake of
having children? He is of an age to have them of his own. He has a wife; he
has actually got children of his own. The father, then, will be
disinheriting his own son.
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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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