For M. Tullius (49)

“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.