Come, now, let us consider another prohibitory law, which has also been now established on
 account of the iniquity of the times, and the excessive licentiousness of men. And he read me the law out of the Twelve Tables, which permits a man to kill a thief by
 night, and even by day if he defends himself with a weapon; and an ancient law out of the
 sacred laws, which allows any one to be put to death with impunity who has assaulted a tribune
 of the people. I imagine I need say no more about the laws.
 And now I, for the first time in this affair, ask this question: —What connection
 the reading of these laws had with this trial? Had the slaves of Marcus Tullius assaulted any
 tribune of the people? I think not. Had they come by night to the house of Publius Fabius to
 steal? Not even that. Had they come by day to steal, and then had they defended themselves
 with a weapon? It cannot be affirmed. Therefore, according to those laws which you have read,
 certainly that man's household had no right to slay the slaves of Marcus Tullius. 
 “Oh,” says he, “I did not read it because of its bearing on
 that subject, but that you might understand this, that it did not appear to our ancestors to
 be anything so utterly intolerable for a man to be slain.” But, in the first place
 those very laws which you read, (to say nothing of other points,) prove how utterly our
 ancestors disapproved of any man being slain unless it was absolutely unavoidable. First of
 all, there is that holy law which armed men petitioned for, that unarmed men might be free
 from danger. Wherefore it was only reasonable for them to wish the person of that magistrate
 to be hedged round with the protection of the laws, by whom the laws themselves are protected.
 The Twelve Tables forbid a thief— that is to say,
 a plunderer and a robber—to be slain by day, even when you catch him, a self-evident
 enemy, within your walls. “Unless he defends himself with a weapon,” says
 the law; not even if he has come with a weapon; unless he uses it, and resists; “you
 shall not kill him. If he resists, endoplorato ,” that
 is to say, raise an outcry, that people may hear you and come to your aid. What can be added
 more to this merciful view of the case, when they did not allow that it might be lawful for a
 man to defend his own life in his own house without witnesses and umpires?