5.
But this is quite a novel way of managing business, and one utterly unheard
of before this time. In the previous action Postumus name never once occurs.
In the action, do I say? You yourselves, O judges, lately sat as judges on
Aulus Gabinius. Did any one witness then mention Postumus? Any witness? did
ever the prosecutor name him? Did you, in short, in the whole of that trial
once hear the name of Postumus?
[11]
Postumus, then, is not an additional criminal implicated in the cause, which
has been already decided. But still one Roman knight has been
dragged before the court as a defendant, on a charge of extortion and
peculation. On what account-books is this charge founded? On some which were
not read on the trial of Aulus Gabinius. By what witness is it supported? By
some one who never once mentioned his name at that time. On the sentence of
what arbitrator do they rely? On one in which no mention whatever was made
of Postumus. In accordance with the provisions of what law? Of one under
which he is not liable.
Here now, O judges, the affair is one which has need of all your acuteness
and of all your good sense. For you ought to consider what it is becoming to
you to do, and not what is lawful for you. For if you ask what is lawful,
you certainly have the power to remove any one whom you please out of the
city. It is the voting tablet which gives you that power; and at the same
time it conceals the capricious exercise of it. No one has any need to fear
the consciousness of the tablet if he has no reverence for his own
conscience.
[12]
Where, then, is the wisdom of
the judge shown? In this, that he considers not only what he has the power
to do, but also what he ought to do; and he does not recollect only what
power has been committed to him, but also to what extent it has been
committed. You have a tablet given you on which to record your judgment.
According to what law? To the Julian law about extortion and peculation.
Concerning what defendant? Concerning a Roman knight. But that body is not
liable to the operation of that law.
* * * *But now I hear what you say. Postumus, then, is prosecuted under that law, from the operation of which not only he, but his whole order, is released and wholly flee.
* * * *But now I hear what you say. Postumus, then, is prosecuted under that law, from the operation of which not only he, but his whole order, is released and wholly flee.
