[22]
Judges, consider and deliberate what becomes your fame, your reputation, and the
common safety? Your eminence prevents your being able to make any mistake without
the greatest injury and danger to the republic. For the Roman people cannot hope
that there are any other men in the senate who can judge uprightly, if you cannot.
It is inevitable that, when it has learnt to despair of the whole order, it should
look for another class of men and another system of judicial proceedings. If this
seems to you at all a trifling matter, because you think the being judges a grave
and inconvenient burden, you ought to be aware, in the first place, that it makes a
difference whether you throw off that burden yourselves, of your own accord, or
whether the power of sitting as judges is taken away from you because you have been
unable to convince the Roman people of your good faith and scrupulous honesty. In
the second place, consider this also, with what great danger we shall come before
those judges whom the Roman people, by reason of its hatred to you, has willed shall
judge concerning you.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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