Therefore, O judges, I will not only prove what you are already aware of, that
 the censorial animadversions, and the reasons given for them too, have often been overturned by
 the votes of the Roman people, but that they have also been upset by the judicial sentences of
 those men who, being on their oaths, were bound to give their decisions with more scrupulousness
 and care. In the first place, O judges, in the case of many defendants, whom the censors in
 their notes accused of having taken money contrary to the laws, they were guided by their own
 conscientious judgment, rather than by the opinion expressed by the censors. In the second
 place, the city praetors, who are bound by their oaths to select only the most virtuous men to
 be judges, have never thought that the fact of a man's having been branded with ignominy by the
 censors was any impediment to their making him a judge. And
 lastly, the censors themselves have very often not adhered to the decisions, if you insist on
 their being called decisions, of former censors. And even the censors themselves consider their
 own decisions to be of only so much weight, that one is not afraid to find fault with, or even
 to rescind the sentence of the other; so that one decides on removing a man from the senate, the
 other wishes to have him retained in it, and thinks him worthy of the highest rank. The one
 orders him to be degraded to the rank of an aerarian Aerarii were those citizens of Rome who did not enjoy the perfect franchise. They had to pay the aes militare , and to remove a citizen in the enjoyment of the full
 franchise into the list of those who enjoyed a less complete one, was of course a degradation
 and a punishment. or to be entirely disfranchised; the other forbids it. So that how can
 it occur to you to call those judicial decisions which you see constantly rescinded by the Roman
 people, repudiated by judges on their oaths, disregarded by the magistrates, altered by those
 who have the same power subsequently conferred on them, and in which you see that the colleagues
 themselves repeatedly disagree? And as all this is the case, let us see what the censors are said to have decided respecting
 that corrupt tribunal. And first of all let us lay down this principle; whether a thing is so
 because the censors have stated it in their notes, or whether they made such a statement in
 their notes because it was the fact. If it is the case because they have so stated it, take care
 what you are doing; beware lest you are establishing for the future a king by power in the
 person of every one of our censors,—beware lest the note In the twenty-ninth book of Livy, c. 37 , an extraordinary instance is related
 of disagreement between the censors; for one of them, Caius Claudius Nero, degraded his
 colleague, Marcus Livius, and Livius in his turn degraded Caius Claudius. of a censor
 may hereafter be able to cause as much distress to the citizens as that terrible proscription
 did,—beware lest we have reason to dread for the future that pen of the censor, whose point our
 ancestors blunted by many remedies, as much as that sword of the dictator. But if the statement which has been made in their notes ought to carry weight
 with it because it is true, then let us inquire whether it be true or false; let the authority
 of the censor be put out of the question —let that consideration be taken out of the cause which
 has no connection with it. Tell me what money Cluentius gave, where he got it, how he gave it;
 show me, in short, one trace of any money having proceeded from Cluentius. After that, prove
 that Oppianicus was a virtuous citizen, or an honest man; that no one had ever had a bad opinion
 of him; that no unfavourable decision had ever been come to respecting him. Then take in the
 authority of the censors; then argue that their decision has any connection whatever with this
 case. But as long as it is plain that Oppianicus was a man
 who was convicted of having tampered with the public registers of his own municipality, of
 having made erasures in a will, of having substituted another person in order to accomplish the
 forgery of a will, of having murdered the man whose name he had put to the will, of having
 thrown into slavery and into prison the uncle of his own son and then murdered him, of having
 contrived to get his own fellow-citizens proscribed and murdered, of having married the wife of
 the man whom he had murdered, of having given money for poisoning, of having murdered his
 mother-in-law and his wife, of having murdered at one time his brother's wife, the children who
 were expected, and his own brother himself,—lastly, of having murdered his own children; as he
 was a man who was manifestly detected in procuring poison for his son-in-law,—who, when his
 assistants and accomplices had been condemned, and when he himself was prosecuted, gave money to
 one of the judges to influence by bribes the votes of the other judges;—while, I say, all this
 is notorious about Oppianicus, and while the accusation of bribery against Cluentius is not
 sustained by any one single proof, what reason is there that that sentence of the censors,
 whether it is to be called their wish or their opinion, should either seem to be any assistance
 to you, or to be able to overwhelm my innocent client?