For Aulus Caecina (37-40)

I am driven out, say you, if any one of my slaves is driven out. Now you are right, for you are altering your language, and appealing, to justice. For if we choose to adhere to the words themselves, how are you driven out when your servant is driven out? But it is as you say—I ought to consider you yourself as driven out, even if you were never touched. Is it not so? Come now, suppose not even one of your slaves was driven from his place, if they were all kept and retained in the house; if you alone were prevented from entering, and frightened away from your house by violence and arms; will you in that case have this right of action which we have adopted, or some other form, or will you have no action at all? It neither becomes your prudence nor your character to say that, in so notable and so atrocious a case, there is no right of action. If there be any other kind of action which has escaped our notice, tell us what it is. I wish to learn.

If this be the proper form, which we have employed, then, if you are the judge, we must gain our cause. For I have no fear of your saying in the same cause, and with the same interdict, that you ought to be restored, but that Caecina ought not. In truth, who is there to whom it is not clear, that the property, and possessions, and fortunes of all men will be again brought back into a state of uncertainty if the effect of this interdict is made in any particular more obscure, or less vigorous? if, under the authority of such men as these judges, the violence of armed men should appear to be approved by a judicial decision? in a trial in which it can be said that there was no question at issue about arms, but that inquiry was only made into the language of the interdict. Shall that man gain his cause before your tribunal, who defends himself in this manner, “I drove you away with armed men, I did not drive you out,” so that the fact is not to depend on the equity of the defence, but on the correctness of a single expression?

Will you lay it down that there is no right of action in such a case as this? that there is no method established for inquiring who has opposed a person with armed men, who has collected a multitude, and so prevented a man not only from effecting an entrance, but even from all access to a property?

See, I entreat you in the name of the immortal gods, what a law you are proceeding to establish for us,—what a condition for yourselves, and what a code for the whole state. In injuries of this kind there is one form of proceeding established, the one which we have adopted, that by interdict. If that is of no avail, or has no reference to this matter, what can be imagined more careless or more stupid than our ancestors, who either omitted to institute any form of proceeding, in so atrocious a business, or else did institute one which fails to embrace in proper language either the fact, or the principle of law applicable to the case. It is a dangerous thing for this interdict to be dissolved. It is a perilous thing for all men, that there should be any case of such a nature that, when deeds of violence have been committed in it, the injustice should not be able to be repaired by law. But this is the most disgraceful thing of all, that most prudent men should be convicted of such egregious folly, as they would be if you were to decide that such a case as this, and such a form of legal proceeding as is requisite, never once occurred to the minds of our ancestors.