Pro A. Caecina

I ask whether there is any legal proceeding open to me in this ease, or whether there is not. It is not right for men to be summoned together on account of a dispute about possession; it is not right for a multitude to be armed for the sake of preserving a right; nor is there anything so contrary to law as violence; nor is there anything so irreconcilable with justice as men collected together and armed. And as the law is such, and the circumstances of the case such, that it appears above all others worthy of being brought under the notice of the magistrates, I ask again whether there is any legal proceeding open to me in this case, or whether there is not. Will you say that there is not? I wish to hear. Is a man, who in time of peace and tranquillity has collected a band, prepared his forces, got together a great number of men, armed them, equipped them,—who has repelled, put to flight and driven off, by arms, and armed men, and terror, and danger of death, unarmed men who had come at a time agreed upon to go through an ordinary legal form;—is such a man to say:

“Yes, indeed, I have done everything which you say; and my conduct was turbulent, and rash, and hazardous. What then; I did it all with impunity; for you have no means of proceeding against me by civil action before the praetor?” Is it so, O judges? Will you listen to this? and will you permit such a thing to be said before you more than once? When our ancestors were men of such diligence and prudence as to establish every requisite law, not only for such important cases as this, but for even the most trivial matters, and to prosecute all offences against them, will you allow that they overlooked this class of cases, the most important of all; so that, if people had compelled me to depart from my home by force of arms, I should have had a right of action, but as they only prevented me from entering my home, I have none? I am not yet arguing the particular case of Caecina, I am not yet speaking of our own particular right of possession. I am resting my complaint wholly on your defence, O Caius Piso.

Since you make this statement, and lay down this principle, “that, if Caecina, when he was actually in his farm, had been driven from it, then it would have been right for him to be restored by means of this interdict; but now he can by no means be said to have been from a place where he has not been; and, therefore, we have gained nothing by this interdict;” I ask you, if, this day, when you are returning home, men collected in a body, and armed, not only prevent you from crossing the threshold and from coming under the roof of your own house, but keep you off from approaching it— from even entering the court yard,—what will you do? My friend Lucius Calpurnius reminds you to say the same thing that he said before, namely that you would bring an action for the injury. But what has this to do with possession? What has this to do with restoring a man who ought to be restored? or with the civil law? --- I will grant you even more. I will allow you not only to bring your action, but also to succeed in it. Will you be any the more in possession of your property for that? For an action for injury done does not carry with it, even if successful, any right of possession; but merely makes up to a man for the loss he sustains through the diminution of his liberty, by the trial and penalty imposed upon the offender.

In the mean time, shall the praetor, O Piso, be silent in so important a matter? Shall he have no power to restore you to the possession of your own house? He who is occupied for whole days in repressing deeds of violence, and in ordering the restitution of what has been obtained by such deeds; he who issues interdicts about ditches, about sewers, in the most trifling disputes about water or roads, shall he on a sudden be struck dumb? Shall he in a most atrocious case have nothing which he can do? And when Caius Piso is prevented from entering his own house, from coming under his own roof—prevented, I say, by men collected in a body and armed,—shall the praetor have no power of assisting him according to established regulations and precedents? For what will he say? or what will you demand after having sustained such a notable injury? No one ever issued an interdict in the terms, “whether you were prevented by violence from coming.” That is a new form; I will not say an unusual one, but a form absolutely unheard of. ”Whence you were driven.” What will you gain by this, when they make you the same answer that they now make me; that armed men opposed you and prevented you from entering your house; moreover, that a man cannot possibly be driven out of a place, who has not entered into it?