1In his own home a man of the highest nobility, the champion of the senate and in those times almost its patron, the uncle of this very brave man among our judges, Marcus Cato, the tribune of the plebs Marcus Drusus, was killed. 1The people were not consulted at all about his death; no inquiry was decreed by the senate. 1How great was the grief in this city, as we have heard from our fathers, when that violence by night was inflicted on Publius Africanus as he rested in his own home? 1Who did not groan then, who did not burn with indignation, that the man whom all wished to be immortal, had it been possible, had not even been allowed to await his natural death?
1Was any inquiry, then, proposed concerning the death of Africanus? 1Certainly none. 17Why so? 17Because famous men are not killed by one kind of crime and obscure men by another. 17Let there be a difference between the standing in life of the highest and of the lowest; 17but death inflicted through crime should be subject to the same penalties and the same laws. 17Unless perhaps a man will be more of a parricide if he kills a father of consular rank than if he kills a humble one, or the death of Publius Clodius will be more atrocious because he was killed among the monuments of his ancestors — for this is often said by those people — just as if the famous Appius the Blind built his road not for the people to use, but for his descendants to commit robbery on it with impunity!
18And so, when on that same Appian Way Publius Clodius had killed a most distinguished Roman knight, Marcus Papirius, that crime was not to be punished — for a nobleman had killed a Roman knight among his own family's monuments — yet now what tragic scenes the name of that same Appian Way stirs up! 18The road which, when it was stained earlier with the blood of an honourable and innocent man, was passed over in silence, is now constantly on men's lips, since it has been soaked in the blood of a brigand and parricide. 18But why do I recall those things? 18A slave of Publius Clodius was arrested in the temple of Castor, whom Clodius had posted there to kill Gnaeus Pompey.
18The dagger was wrenched from his hands as he confessed. 18After that Pompey kept away from the forum, kept away from the senate, kept away from public places; 18he protected himself with his door and walls, not with the rights of the laws and the courts. 19Was any bill proposed, was any new inquiry decreed? 19And yet, if any matter, any man, any occasion was ever worthy of it, surely all these were at their highest in that case. 19An assassin had been posted in the forum and in the very forecourt of the senate; 19and death was being prepared for that man on whose life the safety of the state depended; 19and moreover at such a crisis of the state that, if that one man had fallen, not only this state but all nations would have fallen.
19Unless indeed, because the deed was not carried out, it ought not to have been punished, just as if the laws punished the outcomes of actions and not the intentions of men. 19There was less cause for grief, since the deed was not carried out, but certainly no less cause for punishment. 20How often, judges, have I myself escaped from the weapons of Publius Clodius and from his bloody hands! 20and if either my own fortune or that of the state had not saved me from them, who, pray, would have proposed an inquiry into my death?