But in this cause, when you are defending yourself by the wording and letter of the law,— when this is your argument, “Where were you driven from? Do you mean to say that you were driven from a place which you were prevented from approaching? You were kept off, not driven away;”—when this is what you say, “I confess that I collected men,—I confess that I armed them,—I confess that I threatened you with death,—I confess that this conduct is punishable by the praetor's interdict, if his intention and if equity is to prevail; but I find in the interdict one word under which I can shelter myself. I did not drive you from that place when I only prevented you from coming to it.”

Are you, in making this defence, accusing those who are sitting on the bench, because they think it right to regard justice rather than the letter of the law? And, while speaking on this point, you mid that Scaevola had not succeeded in his case before the centumviri, whom I mentioned before on the occasion of his doing the same thing which you are doing now, (though he had some reason for what he was doing, while you have none,) still he did not succeed in any one's opinion in proving the point that be was maintaining, because he appeared by his language to be opposing justice. I marvel that you should have made this statement in this case, at an unfavourable time, and having an effect exactly contrary to what your cause required; and it also appears strange to me that a statement should often be advanced in courts of justice, and should be sometimes even defended by able men, that one ought not to be always guided by lawyers, and that the civil law ought not always to prevail in the decision of causes.

For those who argue in this way, if they mean that those who sit on the bench have given some wrong decisions, should not say that we ought not to be guided by the civil law, but by stupid men. If they admit that the lawyers give proper answers, and still say that different decisions ought to be given, that is saying that wrong decisions ought to be given; for it is quite impossible that a decision of the judge on a point of law should be correct when given one way, and an answer of a counsel should be right too when given the other way. It is quite clear that no one has any right to be accounted learned in the law, who decides that an incorrect decision is conformable to law. But sometimes contrary decisions have been given.

In the first place, have they been given rightly, or wrongly? If they were given rightly, that was the law which was decided to be so. If they were wrong, then it cannot be doubtful which are to be blamed, the judges or the lawyers. Besides, if any decision has been given on a disputed point, they are not deciding against the opinion of the lawyers, if they give sentence contrary to the decision of Mucius, any more than they would be deciding in compliance with their authority, if sentence were given according to the precedent of Manilius. Forsooth, Crassus himself did not plead his cause before the centumviri in such a way as to speak against the lawyers; but he urged that the arguments which Scaevola brought forward in his defence were not law; and he not only brought forward good arguments to that point, but he also quoted Quintus Mucius, his father-in-law, and many other most learned men, as precedents.

For he who thinks the civil law is to be despised, he is tearing asunder the bonds, not only of all courts of justice, but of all usefulness and of our common life; but he who finds fault with the interpreters of the law, if he says that they are ignorant of the law, is only disparaging the men, and not the civil law itself. If he thinks we ought not to be guided by learned men, then he is not injuring the men, but he is undermining the laws and justice. So that you must feel that nothing is to be maintained in a state with such care as the civil law. In truth, if this is taken away, there is no possibility of any one feeling certain what is his own property or what belongs to another; there is nothing which can be equal to all men, or is the same in every case.