[17]
Because the crime of murder is not different when
eminent men, or when obscure ones are slain. Let there be a difference
between the dignity of the lives of the highest and lowest citizens. If
their death be wrought by wickedness, that must be avenged by the same laws
and punishments in either case; unless, indeed, he is more a parricide who
murders a father of consular rank than he who murders one of
low degree; or, as if the death of Publius Clodius is to be more criminal
because he was slain among the monuments of his ancestors,—for
this is constantly said by that party; as if, I suppose, that illustrious
Appius Caecus made that road, not that the nation might have a road to use,
but that his own posterity might have a place in which to rob with impunity.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.