[19]
What more shall I say? If anything was done by Apollonius to
justify his being punished, shall we conduct this affair in such a manner as to
impute it as a crime to the defendant, as to seek to excite ill-feeling against him,
if he has judged a man rather too harshly? I will not act in so bitter a spirit. I
will not adopt the usual method of accusers, so as to disparage anything which may
have been done mercifully, as having been so done out of indifference; or, if
anything has been punished with severity, so as to pervert that into a charge of
cruelty—I will not act on that system. I will follow your decisions; I
will defend your authority as long as you choose; when you yourself begin to rescind
your own decrees, then cease to be angry with me, for I will contend, as I have a
right to do, that he who has been condemned by his own decision ought to be
condemned by the decisions of judges on their oaths.
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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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