[122]
And lastly, the censors themselves have very often
not adhered to the decisions, if you insist on their being called decisions, of former
censors. And even the censors themselves consider their own decisions to be of only so much
weight, that one is not afraid to find fault with, or even to rescind the sentence of the
other; so that one decides on removing a man from the senate, the other wishes to have him
retained in it, and thinks him worthy of the highest rank. The one orders him to be degraded
to the rank of an aerarian 1 or to be entirely
disfranchised; the other forbids it. So that how can it occur to you to call those judicial
decisions which you see constantly rescinded by the Roman people, repudiated by judges on
their oaths, disregarded by the magistrates, altered by those who have the same power
subsequently conferred on them, and in which you see that the colleagues themselves repeatedly
disagree?
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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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