“Oh,” says he, “I did not read it because of its bearing on that subject, but that you might understand this, that it did not appear to our ancestors to be anything so utterly intolerable for a man to be slain.” But, in the first place those very laws which you read, (to say nothing of other points,) prove how utterly our ancestors disapproved of any man being slain unless it was absolutely unavoidable. First of all, there is that holy law which armed men petitioned for, that unarmed men might be free from danger. Wherefore it was only reasonable for them to wish the person of that magistrate to be hedged round with the protection of the laws, by whom the laws themselves are protected.

The Twelve Tables forbid a thief— that is to say, a plunderer and a robber—to be slain by day, even when you catch him, a self-evident enemy, within your walls. “Unless he defends himself with a weapon,” says the law; not even if he has come with a weapon; unless he uses it, and resists; “you shall not kill him. If he resists, endoplorato,” that is to say, raise an outcry, that people may hear you and come to your aid. What can be added more to this merciful view of the case, when they did not allow that it might be lawful for a man to defend his own life in his own house without witnesses and umpires?

Who is there who ought more to be pardoned, (since you bring me back to the Twelve Tables,) than a man who without being aware of it kills another? No one, I think. For this is a silent law of humanity, that punishment for intentions, but not for fortune, may be exacted of a man. Still our ancestors did not pardon even this. For there is a law in the Twelve Tables, “If a weapon escapes from the hand”

If any one slays a thief, he slays him wrongfully. Why? Because there is no law established by which he may do so. What? suppose he defended himself with a weapon? Then he did not slay him wrongfully. Why so? Because there is a law

Still it would have been done by violence. Still in that very spot which belonged to you, you not only could not lawfully slay the slaves of Marcus Tullius, but even if you had demolished the house without his knowledge, or by violence, because he had built it in your land and defended his act on the ground of its being his, it would be decided to have been done by violence, or secretly. Now, do you yourself decide how true it is, that, when your household had no power to throw down a few tiles with impunity, he had power to commit an extensive massacre without violating the law. If, now that that building has been demolished, I myself were this day to prosecute him on the ground “that it was done by violence, or secretly,” you must inevitably either make restitution according to the sentence of an arbitrator, or you must be condemned in the amount of your security. Now, will you be able to make it seem reasonable to such men as these judges, that, though you had no power of your own right to demolish the building, because it was, as you maintain, on your land, you had power of your own right to slay the men who were in that edifice?

“But my slave is not to be found, who was seen with your slaves. But my cottage was burnt by your slaves.” What reply am I to make to this? I have proved that it was false. Still I will admit it. What comes next? Does it follow from this that the household of Marcus Tullius ought to be murdered? Scarcely, in truth, that they ought to be flogged, scarcely, that they ought to be severely reprimanded. But granting that you were ever so severe; the matter could be tried in the usual course of law, by an everyday sort of trial. What was the need of violence? what was the need of armed men, of slaughter, and of bloodshed?

“But perhaps they would have proceeded to attack me.” This, in their desperate case, is neither a speech nor a defence, but a mere guess, a sort of divination. Were they coming to attack him? Whom? Fabius. With what intention? To kill him. Why? to gain what? how did you find it out? And that I may set forth a plain case as briefly as possible, is it possible to doubt, O judges, which side seems to have been the attacking party?—

Those who came to the house, or those who remained in the house? Those who were slain, or those, of whose number not one man was wounded? Those who had no imaginable reason for acting so, or those who confess that they did act so? But suppose I were to believe that you were afraid of being attacked, who ever laid down such a principle as this, or who could have this granted him without extreme danger to the whole body of citizens, that he might lawfully kill a man, if he only said that he was afraid of being hereafter killed by him? [The rest of this oration is lost.]