Book 5
13.21
Similarly, it may be shown that charges are hasty, insidious or vindictive. The strongest argument, however, which can be brought against a charge is that it involves peril to the community or to the judges themselves; we find an example of the former in the pro Tullio, cp. IV. ii. 131. The speech is lost. where Cicero says Who ever laid down such a principle as this, or who could be allowed, without grave peril to the community, to kill a man, just because he asserts that he feared that he himself might be killed by him? An instance of the latter occurs in the pro Oppio, where Cicero warns the judges at some length not to permit such an action to be brought against the equestrian order. A third of the jury were composed of equites. cp. III. vii 20, v. ix. 13.
13.22
On the other hand there are certain arguments which at times may best be treated with contempt, as being trivial or irrelevant. This course is frequently pursued by Cicero, indeed this affectation of indifference is sometimes carried so far that we trample disdainfully under foot arguments which we should never succeed in refuting by counter-argument.
