[21]
Caius Furius, in the time of our
ancestors, passed a law concerning wills Quintus Voconius passed another
concerning the inheritances of women; innumerable other laws have been
passed about civil law; the Latins have adopted whatever of them they have
chosen; even by the Julian law itself, by which the rights of citizenship
were given to the allies and to the Latins, it was decreed that those people
who did not ratify the law should not have the freedom of the city, which
circumstance gave rise to a great contention among the people of Heraclea, and among the people of
Neapolis,1 as a great part of the population in those states preferred the
liberty which they enjoyed by virtue of their treaty with us to the rights
of citizenship.
Lastly, this is the meaning both of that law and of that expression, that the
peoples who do ratify it enjoy its advantages owing to our kindness, and not
owing to any right of their own.
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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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