defenders of the acts of Caesar who overturn his laws? Unless, indeed,
anything which, for the purpose of recollecting it, he entered in a
note-book, is to be counted among his acts, and defended, however
unjust or useless it may be; 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. 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 Pompeian 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;[8] for 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.