Pro C. Rabirio Perduellionis Reo Ad Quirites

Cicero, Marcus Tullius

Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 2. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Bell, 1856.

I say that there is no one of all those men who were at Rome on that day, which day you are now bringing as it were before the court,—that there was no one of the youth of Rome, who did not take arms and follow the consuls; all those men, whose conduct you can form a conjecture about from their age, are now impeached by you of a capital crime, by your attack upon Caius Rabirius. But it was Rabirius who slew Saturninus. I wish that he had done so. I should not be deprecating punishment for him; I should demand a reward for him. In truth, if his freedom was given to Scaeva, a slave of Quintus Croto, who did slay Lucius Saturninus, what reward ought to have been given to a Roman knight in a similar case? And if Caius Marius, because he had caused drains to be cut, by which water was supplied to the temple of the excellent and mighty Jupiter, and because on the Capitoline Hill---