M. Tullius Cicero, Speech before Roman Citizens on Behalf of Gaius Rabirius, Defendant Against the Charge of Treason
William Blake Tyrrell, Ed.

5. [14] Or, if those proceedings of yours involving the Two Men were beneficial to the people and possessed a particle of fairness or justice, would Gaius Gracchus have ignored them? No doubt the death of your uncle brought a deeper sorrow to you than a brother's did to Gaius Gracchus; no doubt the death of this uncle whom you never saw causes you more bitterness than the death of a brother with whom he had lived in closest harmony caused Gaius Gracchus; undoubtedly, you are avenging the death of an uncle with a similar right as he pursued his brother's death; without doubt that Labienus of yours, your uncle, whoever he was, has left behind among the Roman people an equal longing for himself as had Tiberius Gracchus. Or is your loyalty greater than that of [Gaius] Gracchus, or your feelings, or your intelligence, or your resources, or your influence, or eloquence? Had they been minimal in that man, in comparison with your abilities they would have been considered maximal. [15] Seeing that in all these qualities Gaius Gracchus surpassed all men, how wide a gap do you reckon stretches out between you and him? But [Gaius] Gracchus would die a thousand times by the bitterest death before an executioner would stand in a public meeting of his. Regulations of the censors have enjoined that the executioner be deprived not merely of the forum but the skies, the air, and the dwellings of our city. This man dares to claim, does he, that he is a benefactor of the people and that I am foreign to your interests, when it was he who researched every instance of bitter punishments and bitter words, not from your memory or that of your fathers, but from annalistic archives and royal commentaries, while I, with all my energies, with my every strategy, and with everything I have said or done, have fought back and repelled savagery? Unless perchance you wish a condition for yourselves that your slaves, if they did not have the hope of liberty lying before them, could not possibly endure?

[16] Wretched is the loss of one's good name in the public courts, wretched, too, a monetary fine exacted from one's property, and wretched is exile, but, still, in each calamity there is retained some trace of liberty. Even if death is set before us, we may die in freedom. But the executioner, the veiling of heads, and the very word “cross,” let them all be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears. The results and suffering from these doings as well as the situation, even anticipation, of their enablement, and, in the end, the mere mention of them are unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man. Or is that, while the kindness of their masters frees our slaves from the fear of all these punishments with one stroke of the staff of manumission, neither our exploits nor the lives we have lived nor honors you have bestowed will liberate us from scourging, from the hook, and, finally, from the terror of the cross?

[17] Accordingly, I admit, and even, Labienus, state openly and declare outright that you were dislodged from that savage and unacceptable proceeding, one befitting not a tribune but a king, by my strategy, by my courage, and by my influence. In this proceeding, although you brushed aside all the precedents of our ancestors, the whole authority of the senate, every sanction of religion and public rule of augury, nonetheless, you will not hear about these matters from me in this, all too short time of mine. Free time will be available for us to discuss them later.