[85]
I wish, O judges, if all this appears to you to be a more cunning system of defence than I
usually adopt, that you would consider, first of all, that another originally devised it, and
not I; in the next place, that not only I was not the originator of the system, but that I do
not even approve of it, and that I did not bring it forward for the purposes of my own
defence, but that I used it as a reply to their defence; that I can speak in behalf of my own
rights, and that in this matter which I have brought forward, what ought to be inquired into
is not, in what terms the praetor framed his interdict, but what was the place intended when
he framed it, and that in a case of violence offered by armed: men, the thing to he inquired
into is not, where the violence was offered, but whether it was offered or not; and that you
cannot possibly urge in your defence, that where you wish it to be done, the words of the
interdict ought to be regarded but that where you do not wish it, they ought not to be
considered.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.