1And yet, if there is any occasion for killing a man lawfully, and there are many, surely that one is not only just but even necessary, when violence offered is repelled by violence. 1When a military tribune in the army of Gaius Marius, a relative of that general, was trying to rob a soldier of his chastity, he was killed by the man to whom he was offering violence; 1for the upright young man preferred to act dangerously rather than to submit shamefully. 1And that great man acquitted him of crime and set him free from danger. 10But what death inflicted on a waylayer and a brigand can be unjust?
10What do our escorts mean, what do our swords? 10We certainly would not be allowed to have them if we were in no way allowed to use them. 10This, therefore, judges, is a law not written but inborn, which we have not learned, received or read, but have seized, drawn and pressed out of nature herself, a law for which we were not taught but made, in which we were not trained but steeped: that if our life should fall into any ambush, or into the violence and weapons of brigands or of enemies, every means of securing our safety would be honourable. 11For laws are silent amid arms, and do not bid us wait for them, since one who chose to wait would have to pay an unjust penalty before he could exact a just one.
11And yet very wisely and, in a way, tacitly the law itself grants the power of self-defence, since it forbids not the killing of a man but the carrying of a weapon for the purpose of killing a man, so that, since the motive and not the weapon was examined, one who had used a weapon to defend himself would be judged not to have carried it for the purpose of killing a man. 11Let this point, therefore, stand firm in the case, judges; 11for I do not doubt that I shall win your approval for my defence, if you remember what you cannot forget, that a waylayer may lawfully be killed.