1Since you are most expert in both private and public law, of which senatorial procedure is a part, I wish to hear from you above all whether or not I made a mistake in the senate recently, not so as to be instructed about the past — for that is too late — but about the future, if anything similar should occur. 2You will say: 'Why do you ask what you ought to have known?' 2The servitude of earlier times brought on a certain forgetfulness and ignorance of senatorial procedure, as of the other liberal arts. 3For how few are so patient as to be willing to learn what they will not put to use?
3Add that it is hard to retain what you have learnt unless you practise it. 3So restored liberty has caught us raw and inexperienced; 3and fired by its sweetness, we are forced to do certain things before we know how. 4In ancient times, however, it was the custom that we should learn from our elders, not only by ear but also by eye, what we were soon to do ourselves and, in our turn, to hand down to the younger. 5Hence young men were at once trained by military service in camp, so that they might grow used to commanding by obeying, to leading while they followed; 5hence, when about to stand for office, they stood at the doors of the senate house and were spectators of public deliberation before they were partners in it.
6Each had his own father as his teacher, or, if he had no father, some man of the greatest standing and age in place of a father. 6What power those putting a motion had, what right those giving their opinion, what force the magistrates, what freedom the rest, where to give way and where to resist, what was the time for silence, what the manner of speaking, how conflicting motions were distinguished, how amendments adding something to earlier ones were handled, in short the whole of senatorial practice — they were taught it by examples, which is the most reliable way of learning. 7We, on the other hand, were indeed in camp as young men; 7but at a time when virtue was suspect, idleness prized, when officers had no authority, soldiers no respect, when there was command nowhere and obedience nowhere, when everything was loose, confused and even turned upside down, fit, in short, to be forgotten rather than retained.
8We too looked into the senate house, but a senate house anxious and tongue-tied, when it was dangerous to say what you wanted and wretched to say what you did not. 8What could be learnt then, what good did it do to have learnt it, when the senate was summoned either to the utmost idleness or to the utmost crime, and, kept now for mockery, now for grief, never voted on anything serious, and often on things grievous? 9These same evils, once we were senators and sharers in them, we saw and endured for many years; 9and by them our minds have been dulled, broken and crushed for the future too.
10Short is the time — for all time is the shorter the happier it is — in which we are glad to know what we are, glad to practise what we know. 10All the more justly, then, do I ask first that you pardon my error, if it is an error, and then that you remedy it with your knowledge, you who have always taken care to deal with public law as with private, with ancient as with recent, with the rare as with the common. 11And I think that even to those whose frequent handling of a great many matters let nothing be unknown to them, the kind of question I bring to you was either not well worn or even untried.
11So I shall be the more excusable if I have perhaps slipped, and you the more worthy of praise if you can teach also what is in doubt whether you have ever learnt. 12A motion was put concerning the freedmen of Afranius Dexter, the consul, who had been killed, it was uncertain whether by his own hand or by theirs, and, if by theirs, whether through crime or obedience. 12One man — Who? 12I; 12but it does not matter — thought that after interrogation they should be freed from punishment, another that they should be banished to an island, another that they should be punished with death. 12The difference between these opinions was so great that they could only be taken one by one.
13For what do killing and banishing have in common? 13No more, by Hercules, than banishing and acquitting; 13although the opinion that acquits is somewhat closer to the opinion of the one who banishes than is the one that kills — for both of the former leave life, the latter takes it away —, while meanwhile those who punished with death and those who banished sat together and postponed their disagreement by a temporary pretence of agreement. 14I demanded that the three opinions should keep their own count, and that two should not join together in a brief truce. 14I insisted, therefore, that those who thought the capital penalty should be inflicted should separate from the one who banished, and should not meanwhile band together against those who acquitted when they would soon disagree, because it mattered very little whether the same thing displeased people with whom the same thing had not pleased.
15This too seemed very strange to me, that the man who had proposed that the freedmen be banished and the slaves be punished had been forced to divide his opinion; 15but that this man who would punish the freedmen with death should be counted with the one who banished. 15For if the opinion of one man had had to be divided because it comprised two things, I could not find how the opinion of two men proposing such different things could be joined. 16And so allow me to give account of my judgement to you as if there, as if the matter were still open though it is settled, and to join together now at leisure what I said then piecemeal amid many interruptions.
17Let us suppose that just three judges had been assigned to this case; 17that one of them had decided that the freedmen should die, the second that they should be banished, the third that they should be acquitted. 17Will two of the opinions combine their strength and defeat the last, or will each separately count for just as much as the other, and the first be no more able to be connected with the second than the second with the third? 18So in the senate too opinions which are expressed as different ought to be counted as opposed. 18But if one and the same man proposed both that they should be put to death and that they should be banished, could they, on the opinion of one man, both die and be banished?
18Could it, in short, be considered a single opinion at all, which joined together things so different? 19How then, when one proposes that they be punished and the other that they be banished, can an opinion expressed by two men seem single, which would not seem single if it were expressed by one? 19What then? 19does the law not plainly teach that the opinions of the one who kills and the one who banishes ought to be separated, when it orders the division to be made thus: 'You who hold these views, go to this side; you who hold any other views at all, go to that side which you favour'?
19Examine each word and weigh it: 'you who hold these views', that is, you who think they should be banished, 'to this side', that is, to the side on which sits the man who proposed banishment. 20From which it is plain that those who think they should be put to death cannot remain on the same side. 20'You who hold any other views at all': you notice how the law, not content to say 'other', has added 'at all'. 20Is there any doubt, then, that those who kill hold views altogether other than those who banish? 20'Go to that side which you favour': does not the law itself seem to call, compel and drive those who disagree to the opposite side?
20Does not the consul too show where each should remain and where he should cross, not only by the set form of words but by his hand and gesture? 21But, it will be said, if the opinions of the one who kills and the one who banishes are divided, the result will be that the one that acquits prevails. 21What is that to those giving their opinions? 21surely it does not become them to fight by every art and every means to prevent the milder course from being adopted. 21Yet, it is said, those who punish and those who banish ought to be matched first against those who acquit, and then against each other.
21Just as, no doubt, in certain shows the lot sets one man aside and keeps him to contend with the victor, so in the senate there are certain first contests and second contests, and the third opinion waits for whichever of the two proves superior. 22What of the fact that when the first opinion is approved, the others are defeated? 22By what reasoning, then, can opinions not have one and the same place, when none of them has any place afterwards? 23I shall put it again more plainly. 23Unless, when the one who banishes is giving his opinion, those who would punish capitally at once go over to the other side at the start, it will be in vain for them later to disagree with one with whom a little earlier they had agreed.
24But why am I playing the teacher? 24when what I want is to learn whether the opinions ought to have been divided or voted on one by one. 24I did indeed obtain what I was demanding; 24but I nonetheless ask whether I ought to have demanded it. 24How did I obtain it? 24The man who proposed that the extreme penalty be exacted, overcome, perhaps by the legality, certainly by the fairness of my demand, abandoned his own opinion and went over to the one who banished, afraid, no doubt, that if the opinions were divided, as otherwise seemed likely to happen, the one proposing acquittal would prevail in numbers. 24For there were far more in favour of this one than of either of the other two separately.
25Then those too who were drawn along by his authority, left stranded when he crossed over, abandoned an opinion deserted by its very author, and followed as a deserter the man they had been following as a leader. 26So out of three opinions two were made, and of the two one prevailed, the third having been driven out, which, since it could not overcome both, chose by which it would be beaten. 26Farewell.