[73]
Then Lucius Cotta, being asked his opinion first, said what was most worthy
of the republic,—that nothing had been done respecting me justly,
nothing according to the usages of our ancestors, nothing according to the
laws that no one could be removed out of the city without a regular trial,
that it not only was illegal for any law to be passed, but that no decision
even could be come to except at the comitia
centuriata, that that was all violence, a flame arising from
the confusion of the republic, and the agitated state of the times, when all
rights and all courts of justice were destroyed, that when a great
revolution was impending, I turned aside a little, and out of hope of future
tranquillity, had shunned the present waves and tempests. Wherefore, as I
had when absent delivered the republic from no less serious dangers than I
had previously when present, he said that it was fitting that I should not
only be restored, but also complimented by the senate. He also discussed
many other points with great wisdom, arguing that that most insane and
profligate enemy of modesty and chastity had framed the law which he had
enacted concerning me in such a manner, in such language and with such
statements of fact that even if it had been legally proposed and earned
still it could not have had any force. Wherefore he said, that as I was not
away because of any law, I ought to be recalled not by a law but by the
authority of the senate.
This text is part of:
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.