[93]
What, then, is the
reason why our defence is listened to with such silence now, but that all opportunity of
defending himself was refused to Junius then? Because at that time there was nothing in the
cause but envy, mistake, suspicion, daily assemblies, seditiously stirred up by appeals to
popular feeling. The same tribune of the people was the accuser before the assemblies, and the
prosecutor in the courts of law. Be came into the court of justice not from the, assembly, but
bringing the whole assembly with him. Those steps of Aurelius, 1 which were new at that time, appeared as if
they had been built on purpose for a theatre for the display of that tribunal. And when the
prosecutor had filled them with men in a state of great excitement, there was not only no
opportunity of speaking in favour of the defendant, but none of even rising up to speak.
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1 These were steps built in the forum by Marcus Aurelius Cotta, and called by his name.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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