Book 20
1
As for the obscurities, said Sextus Caecilius, let us not charge those to the fault of the makers of the laws, but to the ignorance of those who cannot follow their meaning, although they also who do not fully understand what is written may he excused. For long lapse of time has rendered old words and customs obsolete, and it is in the light of those words and customs that the sense of the laws is to be understood. As a matter of fact, the laws were compiled and written in the three hundredth year after the founding of Rome, The chronology of Nepos; see note on § 3, above, and on the chapter heading of xvii. 21. and from that time until to-day is clearly not less than six hundred years. But what can be looked upon as cruel in those laws? Unless you think a law is cruel which punishes with death a judge or arbiter appointed by law, who has been convicted of taking a bribe for rendering his decision, ix. 3. or which hands over a thief caught in the act to be the slave of the man from whom he stole, viii. 4. and makes it lawful to kill a robber who comes by night. viii. 12. Tell me, I pray, tell me, you deep student of philosophy, whether you think that the perfidy of a juror who sells his oath contrary to all laws, human and divine, or the intolerable audacity of an open theft, or the treacherous violence of a nocturnal footpad, does not deserve the penalty of death?
