M. Tullius Cicero, Orations, The fourteen orations against Marcus Antonius (Philippics)
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

What law was ever better, more advantageous, more frequently demanded in the best ages of the republic, than the one which forbade the praetorian provinces to be retained more than a year, and the consular provinces more than two? If this law be abrogated, do you think that the acts of Caesar are maintained? What? are not all the laws of Caesar respecting judicial proceedings abrogated by the law which had been proposed concerning the third decury? And are you the defenders of the acts of Caesar who overturn his laws? Unless, indeed, anything which, for the purpose of recollecting it, he entered in a notebook, is to be counted among his acts, and defended, however unjust or useless it may he; and that which he proposed to the people in the comitia centuriata and carried, is not to be accounted one of the acts of Caesar. [20] But what is that third decury? The decury of centurions, says he. What? was not the judicature open to that order by the Julian law, and even before that by the Pompeius and Aurelian laws? The income of the men, says he, was exactly defined. Certainly, not only in the case of a centurion, but in the case, too, of a Roman knight. Therefore, men of the highest honour and of the greatest bravery, who have acted as centurions, are and have been judges. I am not asking about those men, says he. Whoever has acted as centurion, let him be a judge. But if you were to propose a law, that whoever had served in the cavalry, which is a higher post, should be a judge, you would not be able to induce any one to approve of that; for a man's fortune and worth ought to be regarded in a judge. I am not asking about those points, says he; I am going to add as judges, common soldiers of the legion of Alaudae;¹for our friends say that that is the only measure by which they can be saved. Oh what an insulting compliment it is to those men whom you summon to act as judges though they never expected it! For the effect of the law is, to make those men judges in the third decury who do not dare to judge with freedom. And in that how great, O ye immortal gods! is the error of those men who have desired that law. For the meaner the condition of each judge is, the greater will be the severity of judgment with which he will seek to efface the idea of his meanness; and he will strive rather to appear worthy of being classed in the honourable decuries, than to have deservedly ranked in a disreputable one.