For C. Rabirius (10-12)

For as for the trial for treason, which, when you accuse me, you say has been put an end to by me, that is a charge against me; and not against Rabirius. And I wish, O Romans, that I was the first or the only person, who had abolished that in this republic. I wish that that, which he brings forward as a charge against me, might be an evidence of my peculiar glory. For what can be desired by any one which I should prefer to being said in my consulship to have banished the executioner from the forum, and the gallows from the Campus? But that credit belongs, in the first instance, O Romans, to our ancestors, who, after the kings had been expelled, did not choose to retain any vestige of kingly cruelty among a free people; and in the second instance, to many gallant men, who thought it fit that your liberty should not be an unpopular thing from the severity of the punishments with which it was protected but that it should be defended by the lenity of the laws.

Of a truth, the tribune of the people is very much devoted to the interests of the people,—is a guardian and defender of its privileges and liberties! The Porcian law forbade a rod to be laid on the person of any Roman citizen. This merciful man has brought back the scourge. The Porcian law protected the freedom of the citizens against the lictor. Labienus, that friend of the people, has handed them over to the executioner. Caius Gracchus passed a law that no trial should take place affecting the life of a Roman citizen without your orders. This friend of the people has compelled the duumvirs (without any order of yours being issued on the subject) not only to try a Roman citizen, but to condemn a Roman citizen to death without hearing him in his own defence.