M. Tullius Cicero Pro A. Caecina 102

[102] For that, with respect to this cause, I had no alarm, may be understood in the first place from this consideration,—that you have no business to decide on that matter; and in the second place, that Sulla himself passed a law respecting the rights of citizenship, avoiding any taking away of the legal obligations and lights of inheritance of these men. For he orders the people of Ariminum to be under the same law that they have been. And who is there who does not know that they were one of the eighteen ¹ colonies and that they were able to receive inheritances from Roman citizens? But if the rights of citizenship could by law be taken from Aulus Caecina, still it would be more natural for us and all good men now to inquire by what means we could relieve from injustice, and retain as a citizen, a most well-tried and most virtuous man, a man of the greatest wisdom, of the greatest virtue, of the greatest authority at home, than now, when he could not lose any particle of his right of citizenship, for any man to be found, except one like to you, O Sextus, in folly and impudence, who should venture to say that his rights of citizenship have been taken from him.