42
In this trial, you see the question is about violence; you see the question is about armed men; you see that the demolition of houses, the ravaging of lands, the murders of men, fire, plunder, and massacre are brought before the court. And do you wonder that those who assigned this trial thought it sufficient that it should be inquired whether these cruel, and scandalous, and atrocious actions had been done or not; not whether they had been done rightly or wrongfully? The praetors, then, have not departed from the Aquilian law which was passed about damage; but they appointed a very severe course of proceeding in the case of armed men acting with violence. Not that they thought that no inquiry was ever to be made as to the right or the wrong; but they did not think it fit that they who preferred to manage their business by arms rather than by law should argue the question of right and wrong.
43
Nor did they refuse to add the word “wrongfully” because they would not add it in other cases; but they did not think that it was possible for slaves to take arms and collect a band rightfully. Nor did they refuse because they thought, that if this addition were made, it would be possible to persuade such men as these judges that it had not been wrongfully done, but because they would not appear to put a shield in the hands of those men in a court of justice, whom they had summoned before the court for talking those arms which they did take.
