[84]
That topic you avoid and dread; and you
try to call me back from the wide field, if I may so say, of justice, to these narrow passes
of words, and to all the corners of letters. You shall yourself be hemmed in and caught in
those very toils which you try to oppose to me. “I did not drive him away; I drove
him off.” This seems to you a very clever idea. This is the edge of your defence. On
that edge your own cause must inevitably fall. For I reply to you in this way:—If I
was not driven away from the place which I was prevented from approaching, at all events I was
driven away from the place which I did approach, and from which I fled. If the praetor did not
clearly define the place in which he ordered me to be replaced, and merely ordered me to be
replaced, I have not been replaced according to his decree.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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