[50]
But this should not be
done often—never, in fact, except in the interest of
the state (as in the cases of those above mentioned)
or to avenge wrongs (as the two Luculli, for example,
did) or for the protection of our provincials (as I did
in the defence of the Sicilians, or Julius in the prosecution of Albucius in behalf of the Sardinians). The
activity of Lucius Fufius in the impeachment of
Manius Aquilius is likewise famous. This sort of
work, then, may be done once in a lifetime, or at all
events not often. But if it shall be required of anyone to conduct more frequent prosecutions, let him
do it as a service to his country; for it is no disgrace
to be often employed in the prosecution of her
[p. 221]
enemies. And yet a limit should be set even to
that. For it requires a heartless man, it seems, or
rather one who is well-nigh inhuman, to be arraigning one person after another on capital charges.1 It is
not only fraught with danger to the prosecutor himself, but is damaging to his reputation, to allow
himself to be called a prosecutor. Such was the
effect of this epithet upon Marcus Brutus, the scion
of a very noble family and the son of that Brutus who
was an eminent authority in the civil law.
1 A “capital charge” meant to the Roman a charge endangering a person's caput, or civil status. A conviction on such a charge resulted in his civil degradation and the loss of his privileges as a Roman citizen.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.