[31]
And if he had thought that this was the
law, it would have been preferable for Milo to offer his throat to Publius
Clodius,—which was not attacked by him once only, nor for the
first time on that day,—rather than now to be destroyed by you
because he did not surrender himself then to be destroyed by him. But if
there is no one of you who entertains such an opinion as that, then the
question which arises for the consideration of the court is not whether he
was slain or not which we admit but whether he was slain legally or
illegally, which is an inquiry which has often been instituted in any
causes. It is quite plain that a plot was laid and that if a thing which the
senate has decided to be contrary to the laws of the republic. By whom it
was laid is a question. And on this point an inquiry has been ordered to be
instituted. So the senate has marked its disapproval of the fact not of the
man; and Pompeius has appointed this inquiry into the merits of the case and
not into the fact of its existence.
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