Pro A. Caecina

And in the whole of your defence, that appeared to me the most marvellous thing, that you said there was no necessity for being guided by the authority of lawyers. And although this is not the first time that, nor this the only cause in which, I have heard it, still, I did wonder exceedingly why it was said by you. For other men have recourse to this sort of exhortation when they think they have in their case some reasonable and good point which they are defending. If people are arguing against them relying on the letter and exact words, and (as people say) on the strict law, they are in the habit of opposing to injustice of that sort the name and dignity of virtue and justice. Then they laugh at that expression,—“if, or if not.” Then they seek to bring all word-catching, all traps and snares made up of the strict letter of the law, into odium. Then they say loudly that the case ought to be decided by considerations of what is honest and just, and not of cunning and tricky law; that to adhere to the mere text is the part of a false accuser, but that it is the duty of a good judge to uphold the intention and authority of him who framed the law.

But in this cause, when you are defending yourself by the wording and letter of the law,— when this is your argument, “Where were you driven from? Do you mean to say that you were driven from a place which you were prevented from approaching? You were kept off, not driven away;”—when this is what you say, “I confess that I collected men,—I confess that I armed them,—I confess that I threatened you with death,—I confess that this conduct is punishable by the praetor's interdict, if his intention and if equity is to prevail; but I find in the interdict one word under which I can shelter myself. I did not drive you from that place when I only prevented you from coming to it.”

Are you, in making this defence, accusing those who are sitting on the bench, because they think it right to regard justice rather than the letter of the law? And, while speaking on this point, you mid that Scaevola had not succeeded in his case before the centumviri, whom I mentioned before on the occasion of his doing the same thing which you are doing now, (though he had some reason for what he was doing, while you have none,) still he did not succeed in any one's opinion in proving the point that be was maintaining, because he appeared by his language to be opposing justice. I marvel that you should have made this statement in this case, at an unfavourable time, and having an effect exactly contrary to what your cause required; and it also appears strange to me that a statement should often be advanced in courts of justice, and should be sometimes even defended by able men, that one ought not to be always guided by lawyers, and that the civil law ought not always to prevail in the decision of causes.

For those who argue in this way, if they mean that those who sit on the bench have given some wrong decisions, should not say that we ought not to be guided by the civil law, but by stupid men. If they admit that the lawyers give proper answers, and still say that different decisions ought to be given, that is saying that wrong decisions ought to be given; for it is quite impossible that a decision of the judge on a point of law should be correct when given one way, and an answer of a counsel should be right too when given the other way. It is quite clear that no one has any right to be accounted learned in the law, who decides that an incorrect decision is conformable to law. But sometimes contrary decisions have been given.