[120] Now, if the freedman of Cnaeus Lentulus or of Lucius Gellius should convict any man of theft, he, being deprived of all his credit, will never recover any portion of his honourable position in the city; but those men, whom Lucius Gellius himself and Cnaeus Lentulus, the two censors, most illustrious citizens and most wise men, have animadverted on, and, in their reasons for their sentences, have imputed to them theft and peculation, have not only returned to the senate, but have been acquitted of those very charges by judicial sentence.
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Our ancestors did not think it fit for any one to be a judge, not only of any one's character, but not even of the most insignificant money matter, if he had not been agreed to by both the contending parties. Wherefore, in every law in which exception has been made of causes for which a magistrate may not be taken, or a judge elected, or another man accused, this cause of ignominy is passed over. For their intention was that the power of the censors should strike the profligate with terror, but not that it should have power over their lives.
Our ancestors did not think it fit for any one to be a judge, not only of any one's character, but not even of the most insignificant money matter, if he had not been agreed to by both the contending parties. Wherefore, in every law in which exception has been made of causes for which a magistrate may not be taken, or a judge elected, or another man accused, this cause of ignominy is passed over. For their intention was that the power of the censors should strike the profligate with terror, but not that it should have power over their lives.
Pro A. Cluentio. M. Tullius Cicero. Charles Duke Yonge (Translator). London. 1856.
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