I wish, O judges, if all this appears to you to be a more cunning system of defence than I usually adopt, that you would consider, first of all, that another originally devised it, and not I; in the next place, that not only I was not the originator of the system, but that I do not even approve of it, and that I did not bring it forward for the purposes of my own defence, but that I used it as a reply to their defence; that I can speak in behalf of my own rights, and that in this matter which I have brought forward, what ought to be inquired into is not, in what terms the praetor framed his interdict, but what was the place intended when he framed it, and that in a case of violence offered by armed: men, the thing to he inquired into is not, where the violence was offered, but whether it was offered or not; and that you cannot possibly urge in your defence, that where you wish it to be done, the words of the interdict ought to be regarded but that where you do not wish it, they ought not to be considered.

But is any answer given to me with reference to that which I have already mentioned, that this interdict was so framed, not only as to facts, and as to its meaning, but also as to its expressions, that nothing appeared to require any alteration? Listen carefully, O judges, I beseech you, for it becomes your wisdom to recognise, not my prudence, but that of our ancestors; for I am not going to mention what I myself have discovered, but a thing which did not escape their notice. When an interdict is issued respecting acts of violence, they were aware that there are two descriptions of causes to which the interdict had reference: one, if a man had been driven by violence from the place in which he was; the other, if he was driven from the place to which he was coming; and either of these may take place, and nothing else can, O judges.

Consider this then, if you please. If any one has driven my household away from my farm, he has driven me too from that place. If any one came up to me with armed men, outside my farm, and prevented me from entering, then he has driven me, not out of that place, but from that place. For these two classes of actions they invented one phrase which sufficiently expressed them both; so that, whether I had been driven out of my farm, or from my farm, still I should be replaced by one and the same interdict, containing the words “from which you . . . ” these words “from which” comprehend either case: both out of which place, and from which place. Whence was Cinna driven? Out of the city. Whence was Carbo driven? From the city. Whence were the Gauls driven?

From the Capitol. Whence were they driven who were with Gracchus? Out of the Capitol. You see, therefore, that by this one phrase two things are signified, both out of what place, and from what place; and when the praetor orders me to be replaced in that place, he orders me to be so on this understanding, just as if the Gauls had demanded of our ancestors to be replaced in the situation from which they had been driven, and if by any force they had been able to obtain it, it would not, I imagine, have been right for them to be replaced in the mine, by which they had attacked the Capitol, but in the Capitol itself. For this is understood—“Replace him in the place from which you drove him away,” whether you drove him out of the place, or from the place. This now is plain enough; replace him in that place; if you drove him out of this place, replace him in it; if you drove him from this place, replace him in that place, not out of which, but from which he was driven. Just as if a person at sea, when he had come near to his own country, were on a sudden driven off by a storm, and were to wish, as he had been driven off from his country, to be restored to his former position. What he would wish, I imagine, would be this,—that fortune would restore him to the place from which he had been driven; not so as to replace him in the sea, but in the city which he was on his way to. So too, (since now we are necessarily hunting out the meaning of words from the similarity of the circumstances,) he who demands to be restored to the place from which he was driven,—that is to say, whence he was driven, —demands to be restored to that very place itself.