What is the matter,
Piso? do you choose to fight about words? Do you think
it fit to make the cause of justice and equity, the cause not of our property only, but of every
man's property, to depend on a word? I showed what my opinion was; what had been the course
pursued by our ancestors; what was worthy of the authority of those men by whom the cause was to
be decided; that that was honest, and just, and expedient for all men, that it should be
considered with what design and with what intention a law had been established, not in what
words it was framed. You pin me to the words. I will not be so pinned without objecting. I say
that it is not right, I say that this point cannot be maintained, I say that there is no single
thing which can be included in a law with sufficient accuracy, or guarded against, or excepted
against, if through some word being overlooked or placed in an ambiguous position, though the
intention and the truth is completely ascertained, that which is intended is not to prevail, but
that which is expressed, is.
And since I have now stated my objection plainly enough, I will follow you where you invite
me. I ask of you, Was I driven away? not from the farm of Fulcinius, for the praetor has not
commanded me to be replaced only in the case of my having been driven away from that particular
farm, but he has ordered me to be replaced in the place from which I was driven away. I was
driven away from the adjoining farm belonging to my neighbours, across which I was going to that
farm; I was driven away from the road; I was certainly driven away from some place or other,
from some ground, either private or public. I am ordered to be replaced there. You have said
that you have replaced me; I say that I have not been replaced in compliance with the terms of
the praetor's decree. What do we say to this! Your defence must be destroyed either by your own
sword (all men say) or by mine.
If you take refuge in the
intention of the interdict, and say that inquiry must be made into what farm was meant when
Aebutius was ordered to replace me, and if you think it not right for the justice of the case to
be caught in a trap made of words, then you come into my camp, you are fighting under my
standard. That is my defence; mine. I assert this loudly; I call all the gods and men to
witness, that, as our ancestors would allow no legal defence to be pleaded for armed violence,
the question before the court is not, where were the footsteps of the man who was driven away,
but what was the act of the man who drove him away; I say loudly, that the man who was put to
flight was driven away, that violence was offered to the man who was put in danger of his life.
That topic you avoid and dread; and you try to call me back
from the wide field, if I may so say, of justice, to these narrow passes of words, and to all
the corners of letters. You shall yourself be hemmed in and caught in those very toils which you
try to oppose to me. “I did not drive him away; I drove him off.” This seems to you a very
clever idea. This is the edge of your defence. On that edge your own cause must inevitably fall.
For I reply to you in this way:—If I was not driven away from the place which I was prevented
from approaching, at all events I was driven away from the place which I did approach, and from
which I fled. If the praetor did not clearly define the place in which he ordered me to be
replaced, and merely ordered me to be replaced, I have not been replaced according to his
decree.