[30]
These things were all done, O judges, just as I have related them. The man
who laid the plot was defeated; violence was defeated by violence; or, I
should rather say, audacity was crushed by valour. I say nothing about what
the republic, nothing about what you, nothing about what all good men gained
by the result. I do not desire it to be any advantage to me to hear that he
was born with such a destiny that he was unable even to save himself,
without at the same time saving the republic and all of you. If he had not a
right to do so, then I have nothing which I can urge in his defence. But if
both reason has taught this lesson to learned men, and necessity to
barbarians, and custom to all nations, and nature itself to the beasts, that
they are at all times to repel all violence by whatever means they can from
their persons, from their liberties, and from their lives, then you cannot
decide this action to have been wrong, without deciding at the same time
that all men who fall among thieves must perish, either by their weapons, or
by your sentence.
This text is part of:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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