For Aulus Caecina (56-60)

The expression certainly does not only require this, but even compels it. But let all consideration of law, and the effect of the interdict, and the intention of the praetor, and the wisdom and authority of prudent men, reject this defence and treat it as worthless.

But if it were any one of your children who did it, he is called your agent; not that every one is, or is called our agent, who is employed in the transaction of some of our business, but because in this matter, where the intention of the interdict was clearly ascertained, they did not think it worth while to examine too curiously into the exact applicability of every word. For the principles of equity are not different in the case of one servant from what they are in the case of many; there is no different law for this single case, according to whether it was your agent who drove me away,—such a man as is legitimately considered the agent of one who is not in Italy, who is absent on business of the state, being for the time a sort of matter, that is, a deputy possessing the rights of another, or whether it was one of your labourers, or neighbours, or clients, or freedmen,—or any one else who committed that violence and wrought that expulsion at your request, or in your name.

Wherefore, if the same principles of law prevail with respect to replacing a man in his property who has been driven from it by violence, when that is once understood, it certainly has nothing to do with the matter, what is the exact force of each word and name. You must replace me just as much if your freedman drove me away, though he was not appointed to manage any of your business, as if your agent did it; not that every one is an agent who transacts any of our business, but because it is of no importance to the matter to inquire into that point. You must replace me just as much if one slave of yours drove me away, as if your whole household did it; not that one slave is the same as a household, but because the question is, what action has been done, not, in what language every point is expressed. Even (to depart still further from the exact wording of the law, though there is not the least atom of departure from equity,) if it was no slave of yours at all who did it, but if they were all strangers or hired people, still they will be comprehended under the description and name of your household.

What shall we say? Whom, if we wish to speak good Latin, can we properly call armed? Those, I imagine, who are prepared and equipped with shields and swords. What then? Suppose you drive any one headlong from his farm with clods of earth, and stones, and sticks; and if you are ordered to replace a man whom you have driven away with armed men, will you say that you have complied with the terms of the interdict? If words are to govern everything, —if causes are to be settled not by reason but by accidental expressions, then you may say that you have done so, and I will agree. You will establish the point, no doubt, that those were not armed men who only threw stones which they took up from the ground; that lumps of turf and clods of earth were not arms; that those men were not armed, who, as they passed by, had broken off a bough of a tree; that arms have their appropriate classification, some for defending, others for wounding; and all who have not those arms, you will prove to have been unarmed.