[34]
I ask you then, O Vatinius, whether any one in the state since the first
foundation of the city, has ever appealed to the tribunes of the people to
interpose and save him from having to plead his case? Has any criminal ever
mounted up to the tribunal of the president of the court which tried him and
driven him down from thence by violence? and upset all the benches? and
overturned all the balloting urns? and in short, in disturbing the court of
justice committed all those crimes on account of which courts of justice
were instituted? Are you aware that Memmius fled at that time? that your
accusers were with difficulty saved from your hands and those of your
friends? that the judges were even driven away out of the tribunals which
were near? that in the forum, in broad daylight in the sight of the Roman
people, the investigation was put an end to, and the magistrates, and the
usages of our ancestors, and the laws, and the judges, and the defendant and
the penalty, were all alike disregarded and trampled on?
Do you know that all these circumstances were, by the diligence of Caius
Memmius, entered and proved in the public records? And moreover, I ask you
this, when, after you had had an accusation preferred against you, you
returned from your lieutenancy, in order that no one might think that you
wished to avoid a trial; and when you used to say that, though you might
have done whichever you pleased, still you preferred pleading your cause, as
you had been accused; I ask, I say, how it was consistent with that conduct
of yours, in being unwilling to avail yourself of the door of escape which
your lieutenancy opened to you, for you to have recourse to an impious
source of assistance by means of a most dishonest appeal?
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