[98] At all events, I am well aware that this is frequently asked, (as I must remind you of those things which do not occur to yourself,) how it is, if the right of citizenship cannot be taken away, that our citizens have often gone to the Latin colonies. They have gone either of their own accord, or in consequence of some penalty inflicted by the law; though if they would have submitted to the penalty, they might have remained in the city.
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What more need I urge? What shall I say of a man whom the chief of the fetiales 1 has given up, or whom his own father or his people have sold? By what law does he lose his right of citizenship? In order that the city may be released from some religious obligation, a Roman citizen is surrendered; and when he is accepted, he then belongs to those men to whom he has been surrendered. If they refuse to receive him, as the people of Numantia refused to receive Mancinus, 2 he then retains his original rights of citizenship unimpaired. If his father has sold him, he discharges him from all subjection to his power, whom, when he was born, he had had absolute power over.
What more need I urge? What shall I say of a man whom the chief of the fetiales 1 has given up, or whom his own father or his people have sold? By what law does he lose his right of citizenship? In order that the city may be released from some religious obligation, a Roman citizen is surrendered; and when he is accepted, he then belongs to those men to whom he has been surrendered. If they refuse to receive him, as the people of Numantia refused to receive Mancinus, 2 he then retains his original rights of citizenship unimpaired. If his father has sold him, he discharges him from all subjection to his power, whom, when he was born, he had had absolute power over.
Pro A. Caecina. M. Tullius Cicero. Charles Duke Yonge (Translator). London. 1856.
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