The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 | Page 5

should venture to
say in this assembly that he, with the assistance of a lot of common
operatives, would pull down a house which had been built at the public
expense in accordance with a vote of the senate? And who ever
employed such compulsion as the threat of such an injury as to a
senator? or what severer punishment has ever been he himself was
unable to perform? As, in fact, he has failed to perform many promises
made to many people. And a great many more of those promises have
been found since his death, than the number of all the services which he
conferred on and did to people during all the years that he was alive
would amount to.
But all those things I do not change, I do not meddle with. Nay, I
defend all his good acts with the greatest earnestness. Would that the
money remained in the temple of Opis! Bloodstained, indeed, it may be,
but still needful at these times, since it is not restored to those to whom

it really belongs.[7] Let that, however, be squandered too, if it is so
written in his acts. Is there anything whatever that can be called so
peculiarly the act of that man who, while clad in the robe of peace, was
yet invested with both civil and military command in the republic, as a
law of his? Ask for the acts of Gracchus, the Sempronian laws will be
brought forward; ask for those of Sylla, you will have the Cornelian
laws. What more? In what acts did the third consulship of Cnaeus
Pompeius consist? Why, in his laws. And if you could ask Caesar
himself what he had done in the city and in the garb of peace, he would
reply that he had passed many excellent laws; but his memoranda he
would either alter or not produce at all; or, if he did produce them, he
would not class them among his acts. But, however, I allow even these
things to pass for acts; at some things I am content to wink; but I think
it intolerable that the acts of Caesar in the most important instances,
that is to say, in his laws, are to be annulled for their sake.
VIII. What law was ever better, more advantageous, more frequently
demanded in the best ages of the republic, than the one which forbade
the praetorian provinces to be retained more than a year, and the
consular provinces more than two? If this law be abrogated, do you
think that the acts of Caesar are maintained? What? are not all the laws
of Caesar respecting judicial proceedings abrogated by the law which
has been proposed concerning the third decury? And are you the
defenders of the acts of Caesar who overturn his laws? Unless, indeed,
anything which, for the purpose of recollecting it, he entered in a
note-book, is to be counted among his acts, and defended, however
unjust or useless it may be; and that which he proposed to the people in
the comitia centuriata and carried, is not to be accounted one of the acts
of Caesar. But what is that third decury? The decury of centurions, says
he. What? was not the judicature open to that order by the Julian law,
and even before that by the Pompeian and Aurelian laws? The income
of the men, says he, was exactly defined. Certainly, not only in the case
of a centurion, but in the case, too, of a Roman knight. Therefore, men
of the highest honour and of the greatest bravery, who have acted as
centurions, are and have been judges. I am not asking about those men,
says he. Whoever has acted as centurion, let him be a judge. But if you
were to propose a law, that whoever had served in the cavalry, which is
a higher post, should be a judge, you would not be able to induce any

one to approve of that; for a man's fortune and worth ought to be
regarded in a judge. I am not asking about those points, says he; I am
going to add as judges, common soldiers of the legion of Alaudae;[8]
for our friends say, that that is the only measure by which they can be
saved. Oh what an insulting compliment it is to those men whom you
summon to act as judges though they never expected it! For the effect
of the law is, to make those men judges in the third decury who do not
dare to judge with freedom. And in that how great, O ye immortal gods!
is the error of those men who have desired that law. For the meaner the
condition of each judge is, the greater will be the severity of judgment